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  • Witness to Thileepan’s fast

    Sep 15
    Thileepan, the young Tiger leader of Jaffna, took the podium on the 14th September 1987 at the Nallur Kandasamy temple to commence his fast- unto-death as a protest against India’s failure to fulfill her pledges, and to mobilise the frustrated sentiments of the Tamils into a national mass upsurgence.
     
    Thileepan’s non-violent struggle was unique and extraordinary for its commitment. Although an armed guerrilla fighter, he chose the spiritual mode of ‘ahimsa’ as enunciated by the great Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi to impress upon India the plight and predicament of the people of Tamil Eelam.
     
    The levels to which the Tamil people or more specifically, the LTTE cadres, are prepared to go for their freedom mirrors not only a deep passion for their liberation, but indicates the phenomenal degree of oppression they have been subjected to. It is only those who experience intolerable oppression of such a magnitude, of being threatened with extinction, that are capable of supreme forms of self sacrifice as we have seen from Thileepan’s episode.
     
    Thileepan, who had travelled to Delhi as part of LTTE leader Vellupillai Pirabakaran’s delegation before the signing of the Accord, was informed of the content of the dialogue that had taken place between the Indian Prime Minister and the LTTE leader.
     
    With the knowledge that there was an unwritten agreement between Indian Premier Rajiv Gandhi and Mr. Pirabakaran and that it had not been implemented, he felt that his people and the struggle had been betrayed and decided on a fast-unto-death demanding the fulfillment of the pledges.
     
    When news of Thileepan’s fast-unto-death and the deteriorating political situation between the LTTE and the Indian Peace Keeping Force reached us, we decided to leave India for Jaffna.
     
    My joy at reaching the shores of Tamil Eelam after so many years was contained by the gloom that hung in the air. Thileepan was a few days into his fast till death and the population of the Peninsula was seriously concerned and wholeheartedly behind the non-violent campaign of a single individual seeking justice from the world’s largest democracy. Subsequently, our first priority after our arrival in the Peninsula was to visit Thileepan encamped at the historic Nallur Kandasamy temple, the cultural and spiritual centre of the Jaffna Tamils.
     
    Thileepan’s decision to single-handedly take on the credibility of the Indian state was not incongruous with his history of resistance to state oppression as a cadre in the LTTE. He had faced battle on several occasions in defence of Jaffna during Kittu’s time and suffered serious abdominal wounds in the process. He was well known for his astute understanding of the politics and mindset of his people and emerged as a radical political leader.
     
    The senior LTTE women cadres often speak of his staunch advocacy of inducting women into the national struggle and is remembered as one of the founding fathers in the promotion of women’s issues. With such a history it comes as no surprise that he endeared himself not only to the cadres but the people of Jaffna also.
     
    My husband, LTTE theoretician Anton Balasingham, met Thileepan during the pre-Accord talks when he shared a hotel room with him in Delhi and quickly grew very fond of this affable fellow. It was an extremely painful and emotional experience for Bala to meet him again in Jaffna, in totally adverse conditions, with Thileepan’s life slowly ebbing away.
  • Sri Lanka recalls envoy to Japan after Prime Minster is finger printed at airport
    Sri Lanka has recalled its envoy to Japan after Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake was finger printed, made to wait for approximately half an hour and processed through normal passenger channel instead of the VIP lounge at Narita airport in Japan.

    Wickramanayake, had visited Japan at the invitation of the head monk of
    a well-known Buddhist temple in Kobe to the chief guest at a religious ceremony.

    According to a source at the Prime Minister’s office, the officials who went to receive Wickaramanayake had apparently slipped-up by waiting outside instead of going into receive the Premier, as he entered the airport terminal after landing.

    As a result Wickramanayake and the entourage had been cleared only through the normal passenger channel and not through the VIP lounge.

    Japan had begun fingerprinting foreigners about a year ago as a security measure, but VIPs are exempted if embassy officials coordinate with the immigration to ensure quick clearance.

    Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama has recalled Jayantha Palipane, Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Japan over the incident and directed the Sri Lankan Embassy in Japan to conduct a probe, according to Foreign Ministry sources. Sources also said that the decision to recall Palipane was not based merely on the incident involving the Sri Lankan premier but on some past incidents as well.

    Whilst Colombo has tried to portray that the Sri Lankan embassy in Japan was at least partially responsible for the ordeal of the Prime Minister, reports citing diplomatic circles in Colombo claim that the visa issued to Wickramanayake by Japan was a temporary visa normally issued to ordinary visitors.

    Some media reports in Colombo claim the recall of Palipane is Colombo’s the latest 'panicked restructuring' of its foreign service.

    Recalling of the ambassador may look as a response to an incident at the Narita airport involving the prime minister of Sri Lanka, but it is only a pretext, according to the sources.

    President Mahinda Rajapaksa was making use of career diplomats and academics to paint a deceptive picture of his government before and during the war. But now the government, either not trusting its own diplomats or considering them a spent force, replaces them with military and political appointments in the style of some totalitarian regimes, the sources further said.

    Palipane is a senior career diplomat of nearly quarter a century of service. 

     
  • Aiding Repression
    Sanctions are a diplomatic tool for the international community to peaceably compel recalcitrant governments into conforming with accepted international norms. This is the basis on which a variety of sanctions have in the past been successfully applied to regimes in Libya, Zimbabwe and Apartheid South Africa amongst many others. The logic of sanctions is simple: economic isolation of a state compels its discomforted people to pressure their leadership to change its behaviour and adhere to sought after international principles.
     
    Thus, it is especially on ultra-nationalist leaderships that rely on popular support, like President Mahinda Rajapskse's government in Sri Lanka or former President Slobodan Milosevic's in Serbia, that sanctions can be most effective. Moreover, irrespective of questions of efficacy, as exemplified by the cases of Serbia and Saddam's Iraq, sanctions are the only means, short of the use of armed force, to compel states to adhere to internationally accepted codes of conduct.
     
    Amid Sri Lanka's unabashed defiance of international human rights and governance norms, the European Union, press reports this month suggest, is considering withdrawing the GSP+ subsidy for firms that import from there. This, according to Sri Lanka's supporters, should not happen as it will "hurt" 250,000 'Sri Lankans'. But that, surely, is the logic of sanctions. It is only when the majority Sinhalese who support President Rajapak-se's ultra-nationalist regime are compelled by economic hardship into bringing internal pressure to bear on it that international demands over human rights and political reconciliation, for example, will even draw lip service from it.
     
    There are two related factors inherent to economics in Sri Lanka. Firstly, the vast majority of people involved in the export-manufacture sector make up the Sinhala vote bank on which President Rajapakse's political fortunes, short of him imposing a militarized dictatorship, depend. Secondly, manufacturing is non-existent in the Tamil-speaking Northeast, which has been ravaged repeatedly by the thirty years of war. In other words, under these conditions, further foreign investment or subsidies in the southern (Sinhala-dominated) economy will not only further secure the Rajapakse regime and entrench the rampant chauvinism that has swept the country in the past three years it will fuel the ethnic polarization.
     
    Since 1977, foreign subsidies and investment have benefit the Sinhala only while structurally excluding the Tamils. This is as true of the major infrastructure projects supported by donors, as the majority of their 'poverty-alleviation' efforts. As forthcoming research from the University of London reveals, this is no outlandish claim, but self-evident from where - and how - donors have undertaken their efforts for thirty years.
     
    That most wealth is concentrated in Sri Lanka's Western province does not mean the rest of the Sinhala south and Tamil-speaking Northeast have been equally 'excluded'. On the one hand, there is the militarized repression under which Tamils have lived since liberalization began in 1977, the devastating firepower unleashed against Tamil towns and villages during the war and the proclivity of donors to simply ignore the Northeast whilst waiting for the government to win the war. On the other hand, there is the Sinhala dominance of the state, the flow of massive infrastructure development in Sinhala areas (for example Hambantota port), the political patron-client networks and the military remittances that have ensured the Sinhalese has been far better protected against economic hardship than the Tamils for the past few decades.
     
    This year, Sri Lanka has massacred tens of thousands of Tamils; 20,000 in the last weeks of the war against the Liberation Tigers. It continues, despite near daily international protest, to incarcerate hundreds of thousands of people, precisely because they are Tamils, while blocking international humanitarian and media access. For years, President Rajapakse's regime has murdered, 'disappeared', and tortured with complete impunity. Indeed, it has thumbed its nose at the international community, daring it to do its worst.
     
    Conversely, international inaction has allowed the regime to project itself internally as successfully standing up to the international community. Popular support, thus bolstered, has in turn fuelled chauvinism and repression. The international community can thus support the Sinhala state and hope for lasting peace or it can act to constrain Sinhala chauvinism and bring about one. Meanwhile, as more than one international observer has realized, Sri Lanka is in inexorable transition - between one war and another.
  • Pakistan destroyer on goodwill visit to Sri Lanka
    A Pakistani navy ship arrived in Sri Lanka on a goodwill visit aimed at strengthening existing ties and the level of cooperation between the two countries, according to navy sources in Sri Lanka.

    PNS ‘Zulfiquar’, Pakistan’s destroyer class ship arrived in Colombo harbour on Saturday, September 5 and was ceremonially welcomed by the Sri Lanka Navy in the presence of Pakistan Defence Adviser Colonel Syed Khurram Hassnain Alam.

    "This will provide an opportunity for close interaction between both friendly navies", a spokesperson for Pakistan high commission in Sri Lanka said, announcing the ship’s visit.

    “Such relationships have picked up momentum in the last few years owing to growing interdependence at state level in facing emerging challenges and to enhance security and defence of vital national interests though such visits to regional countries are a regular feature” he added.

    PNS “Zulfiquar” is 123 meters long, 13.2 meters wide and 30.7 meters in height with a displacement of 3143.9 tonnes and a crew of 14 officers and 188 sailors, SLN sources told media in Colombo.

    The Ship’s Commanding Officer Captain Zahid Ilyas called on Sri Lankan Navy Commander Vice Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe at the Navy Headquarters later.


  • UN officials expelled by Sri Lanka
    Chief of Communications for UNICEF in Sri Lanka, James Elder's visa to continue to remain in Sri Lanka was refused earlier this month by Sri Lanka's Department of Immigration without giving any reasons.

    News of Elder’s eviction was followed by news of another senior UN diplomat expelled from Sri Lanka in July for providing details to the international community of mass killings of civilians during the final battles against the Tamil Tigers, also emerged.

    It is widely believed that Elder is being expelled for recent remarks about the plight of refugees living in government-controlled camps in the north of the country.

    Elder called for aid groups to have unfettered access to the camps, to bring in medical aid and supplies.

    "It's important to remember these people have arrived in camps in the worst possible state," he said.

    "They are hungry and sick, and many still have untended wounds from the war." And added he’d seen “babies with shrapnel wounds, gunshot injuries and blast wounds” during Sri Lanka’s final push against the LTTE.

    Elder was also quoted in the media saying the about 270,000 displaced people were suffering hardship due to heavy flooding in the camps after heavy rain in some areas of Vavuniya district in recent weeks.

    However, Palitha Kohona, permanent secretary at the Sri Lankan ministry of foreign affairs, told the BBC Elder had issued statements "which were not exactly based on facts, which were not researched, which were essentially reflective of the LTTE [Tamil Tigers] perspective.

    "He was doing propaganda, in our view, in support of the LTTE," Kohona was quoted by BBC as saying.

    Kohona's comments have raised fears about the safety of Elder and his family in a country where ethnic tensions remain high just months after the end of a long-running civil war, reported the Age newspaper.
    According to the newspaper, Elder has received intimidating phone messages after it was announced that his visa would be cancelled on September 21.

    Even if the Sri Lankan Government reverses its decision to expel Elder, Kohona's comments appear to make his position in Sri Lanka untenable, the Age added.

    Elder, who holds an Australian passport, had been working for UNICEF in Sri Lanka since July 2008 and had a residency visa valid until 2010.
    Reacting to the news of Elders’ eviction, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters: "The secretary-general strongly regrets the decision of the Sri Lankan government to expel Mr. James Elder, spokesman for UNICEF in Sri Lanka"

    ''The United Nations is working impartially to assist the people of Sri Lanka, and the Government should be supporting and co-operating with its efforts,'' Haq said adding UN Secreatry Genral Ban Ki Moon would raise the issue with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse "at the earliest opportunity."

    The UNICEF reacting to Sri Lanka’s actions, in a statement said it was extremely 'concerned and disappointed' with the Sri Lankan government's decision.

    'Through Mr Elder, Unicef has consistently spoken out against the suffering of children on both sides of the intense hostilities earlier this year and called for their protection. Unicef unequivocally rejects any allegation of bias,' Unicef chief executive Ann Veneman said in a statement released in New York.

    'Unicef has always upheld the principle of impartial advocacy and communication on behalf of children as a fundamental part of its global mandate,' she said.

    'Unicef will continue to uphold its mandate in Sri Lanka, and elsewhere, to advocate and speak out on behalf of vulnerable children and women,' the statement added.

    Meanwhile, the Guardian newspaper in Britain Saturday, September 12, reported Peter Mackay, another Australian citizen, was given two weeks to leave the country in July this for providing detailed rebuttals of Sri Lankan government’s "wartime propaganda."

    The diplomat was seen as a legal timebomb by the Sri Lankan government as he could personally take the stand and testify that the army shelled non-combatants – action considered to be a war crime under international law, the paper said.

    “Mackay, a field operative who worked for Unops – the technical arm of the UN – was a less familiar face to the media. But he played a key role in keeping the outside world informed about the number of civilians killed in the final months of the war – deaths that Sri Lanka was keen to play down,” The Guardian reported.

    Mackay collected high-resolution satellite images showing that the number of people trapped on beaches where the Tigers made their last stand was far higher than that claimed by the government.

    The data showed that not only were more people in danger than the government admitted, but that the food and medicine sent to the "no fire zone" were inadequate.

    Mackay was also in touch with local staff and put together briefings, using eyewitness reports of the war, which led the UN to warn of a "bloodbath" in the final weeks of fighting.

    Mackay's experience and knowledge of LTTE-held territory made him the ideal UN candidate to record how the war was being fought, the paper said.

    “He was stranded behind Tamil Tiger lines on a mission to rescue 100 local staff and their families and was repeatedly bombed for 10 days in January, despite desperate calls to army commanders by his superiors imploring them to stop firing,” the paper reported.

    His presence, however, attracted the attention of Sri Lanka's military. In a letter sent in late July, the authorities gave him two weeks to pack up, saying that his "adverse activities had come to the notice of the intelligence services".

    A senior UN source confirmed that Mackay had been asked to leave, adding that "the issue was taken up through diplomatic channels with the government, but their decision remained unchanged".
    The visas of at least 10 foreign workers of non-governmental organisations have been cancelled or not extended over allegations of bias against the Tamil rebels.

  • Continuing misery of Sri Lanka’s camps
    Almost 4 months since the end of the war, little progress has been made at the camps that hold nearly 300,000 Tamil civilians which have been described as “shocking and disturbing”, recent press reports said.

    New mobile phone footage of conditions in the Manik Farm camp in Vavuniya shows ill people lying on mud floors with intravenous drips in their arms and no hospital beds in sight.

    The footage was apparently recorded two weeks ago and provided to Channel 4 news by a group called War without Witness.

    "Patients on intravenous drips lying on mud floors, a man so weak he is unable to brush the flies from his face," Channel 4 said in its broadcast, adding, "[t]he concern now is that when the monsoon rain season begins, the camp will be flooded."

    One third of all children under 5 in the camps have malnutrition and 8% of those have it in its acute form, the report said.

    “It is a horrendous place to be for anyone” James Elder, the UNICEF spokesman, told Channel 4. He has since been told to leave Sri Lanka by the government, which has accused him of spreading propaganda in support of the Tigers.

    Aid workers made fresh plea for the government to take action due to the already poor conditions in the camps and mounting fear of worsening conditions in the coming monsoon season.

    Recent floods from last month have already destroyed two thousand settlements and have further worsened sanitation conditions, submerging toilets and contaminating water.

    The impending monsoon season, due in October, will be highly destructive to the weak infrastructure of the camps, aid workers say.

    “A potential crisis could brew there if the rains come through and those camps are still as congested as they are [now],”a Catholic Fund for Overseas Development (CAFOD) official who visited one of the IDP camps recently told the BBC.

    “Nothing has changed over the last three months for the people that are living in the camps. They are overcrowded with poor sanitary conditions and inadequate health care,” CAFOD’s head of international program said.

    “The people have basic food and supplies but many remain traumatised and due to restricted movement are still separated from their families causing even more distress.”

    Sri Lanka's Resettlement Minister Rishard Bathurdeen has blamed UN agencies for what he calls a poorly constructed drainage system that collapsed during the floods.

    But Human Rights Watch said the government must take "full responsibility" for the squalid conditions.

    The New York-based group urged Colombo to release inmates to live with their families and friends, a demand consistently rejected by authorities.

    "Locking families up in squalid conditions and then blaming aid agencies for their plight is downright shameful," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

    "This is illegal, dangerous, and inhumane," he said, adding the floods had "heightened the risk of outbreak of disease".

    The government has severely restricted access to the camps and does not allow journalists to visit the area on their own.

    Although the government originally promised to resettled 80% of the detainees by the end of the year, there is concern that seems to have been delayed indefinitely now.




    United Nations spokesman in Colombo, Gordon Weiss, says they are not seeing enough progress in return of the displaced Tamils to their homes.

    "We want to be clear that we expect people will be allowed to return home very soon and much faster than is taking place at the moment," he said.

    "We want to understand how people are being screened, because there are a lot of people inside these camps who clearly present no appreciable security risk to the government, lots of women with young families, lots of young children, separated and orphaned children, people who are ill."

    U.N. spokesman Weiss says it is not possible to indefinitely fund the camps, which are being run with assistance from the UN and other international donors.

    "There needs to be a degree of clarity about how this money is being spent, what it is being spent for, in other words there needs to be a conclusion because the involvement of the United Nations in these camps is on the understanding that the people will not be there for a long time," he said.

    Other agencies echo this concern. “At the moment this process [of returning the displaced] is painfully slow. The Sri Lanka government must make good its commitment by making a start and allowing the most vulnerable groups to return home” said the CAFOD official.

    The camps fail to meet international standards on basic access to food, water and shelter. Overcrowding and lack of freedom to movement heightens any risk of disease and violence within the camps.

    Outbreaks of diseases such as Hepatitis A, chicken pox and skin ailments are prevalent and concern that cholera may develop, an earlier report by Aljazeera said.

    Aid agencies sounded the alarm to the UN Humanitarian Co-ordinater even before the war was over, that "current conditions in Menik farm are not only a violation of IDP's fundamental rights to freedom of movement, education and livelihoods, they are also failing to adequately fulfil rights on basic access to food, shelter and water," Aljazeera said.

    Most of the shelters hold twice the number of people recommended under international standards.

    Over 220,000 people are held in overcrowded and poor sanitary conditions in the six-zones of the Manik Farm camp, while minimum international standards – outlined by the Sphere Project – would allow for a maximum of 140,000 people in the cramped space, the report said.

    Further, with nearly four hundred babies born every month in the Manik Farm camp, the people there are in need of considerable assistance and care, which they are not getting.

    Sarvodaya leader Dr A. T. Ariyaretna presented the statistics when he was making a commemorative address in honour of Mother Theresa of Calcutta, at the SEDEC centre in Colombo.

    Mr. Ariyaretna said that Sarvodaya movement was able to put together and supply some 800 cots for the infants in a short period of time, although the initial requirement was 400 cots at the request of the health authorities at the Menik Farm.

    "If Mother Theresa were alive today, she would have rushed to the IDP camps in Vavuniyaa to help the inmates there," he said.

  • SLA massacred civilians in bunkers – medical worker
    The advancing Sri Lanka Army massacred civilians by paving their bunkers with tanks, by throwing explosives inside the bunkers and by shooting the injured, says a medical worker who came out of Mullivaykkal during the last days of the war, became incarcerated in a camp and now escaped the island.

    "Around a hundred thousand captured civilians herded to Mullaiththeevu were kept in rows within barbed wires, most of the time without water or food under the hot sun, and were bullied and ill treated with arrogance," he writes in a lengthy note that reached TamilNet.

    The note in Tamil was provided by the Norwegian Tamils Health Organisation (NTHO), urging TamilNet not to reveal the identity of the health worker for reasons of his security.

    The medical worker was injured in a fire-bomb attack of the SLA on May 12th.

    On alleged earlier firing on civilians, who in desperation tried to get into SLA controlled area, and on violence in recruitment during the last days that especially affected the families of LTTE heroes and fighters, the medical worker attributed responsibility to some elements long infiltrated into the LTTE, to work on behalf of Colombo. LTTE senior ranks were shaken by such treachery, he writes.

    Further personal observations culled out from his notes follow:

    Colombo particularly targeted hospitals and makeshift hospitals. When people moved away from Ki'linochchi, its hospital started functioning in the school building at Udaiyaar-kaddu. More than two thousand shells were fired on this building by the SLA.

    Ki’linochchi to Tharmapuram, Vaddakkachchi, Visuvamadu, Udaiyaar-kaddu, Puthukkudiyiruppu – until reaching Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal, at an average 50 civilians were killed every day in Sri Lankan attacks. 8000 were already killed before herded into Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal.

    Medical work decimated and workers were shaken at the death of patients, nurses and workers.

    When there were more than 300,000 people, Colombo sent food for only 30,000.

    Important medicines such as anaesthetic drugs were not sent. Life-saving surgery without anaesthesia was a cursing ordeal for the patients as well as doctors.

    Mothers and children standing in queue to receive infant milk food were targeted in the SL shell attacks. Without seeing no one could visualize the sorrow of the child that lost the mother and the mother who lost the child.

    SLA shell attacks, guided by spy craft were targeted on queues for gruel also. Despite casualties the queue would form again.

    While even gruel was scarce to people, lands they cultivated were harvested by the SLA.

    At one stage, the LTTE leadership ordered food meant for combatants to be shared with civilians. The fighters fought only with gruel food and to the last LTTE served gruel to people.

    Around 1000 waterholes were dug and several hundreds of toilets were made for civilians at the initiative of the LTTE. Water often mixed with sand was collected in shell-halves and was filtered by cloth.

    There were no epidemics.

    Pregnant mothers and infants bearing shell fragments came to makeshift hospitals.

    These hospitals functioned 24 hours and wailing was always heard around them.

    Many dead bodies couldn’t be buried in certain situations of SL attacks and hungry dogs dragged them.

    Every time moving patents to ICRC vessel there will be targeted shelling from the SLA. A few hundreds taken for ICRC treatment died. How that happened was not known and whom to ask.

    Even in emaciated conditions people donated blood for treatment and some of them later died of their own injuries.

    More than a thousand people were killed on the day when the SLA entered into Maaththa’lan and Pokka’nai (20th April).

    On May 15th and 16th the SLA entered and rampaged the pocket of land crowded with nearly a hundred thousand people.

    I had to pass through at least around 300 bodies when I came out. Some were alive but couldn’t walk. I helped a few who could walk. Some held my feet when I tried to go away. What could I do?

    There is a long list of people who were eliminated and disappeared after capture by the SLA. The army-controlled area was a place where murders took place in front of one’s eyes.

    In Mullaiththeevu, a hundred thousand people made to stand in rows would all of a sudden be ordered to squat by the SL army. The soldiers would make sadistic laugh at seeing the melee of people falling on each other in the exercise.

    Long poles were used to beat the people and to threaten them.

    Old and young stood under hot sun for a long time, immensely suffering from thirst.

    Mullaiththeevu to Vavuniyaa was scenery of disaster.

    There were 20 to 25 people in a tent in the internment camp at Cheddiku’lam. Food was sometimes thrown from a vehicle.

    Everyday in the internment camp around 30 people died.

    It was a place of epidemics.

    Thousands suffered of Chicken Pox, hundreds had brain fever, many elders died and some committed suicide.

    The bribe to SL army for a person to come out was several hundred thousands of rupees.

    In the last days of the war over 18,000 killed, more than 5,000 lost limbs, more than 7,000 seriously injured and several thousands suffered minor injuries. Several thousands suffer mental illnesses. More than a hundred medical workers- doctors, nurses and volunteers perished.

    Knowledge and exercise of precaution reduced casualty. No one died of any epidemic under LTTE control.

    Several thousands of Sinhala youth of the SLA, from poor families, regrettably laid down their life in the war.

    The sadistic lust of Mahinda Rajapaksa is very astonishing - inflicting pain on ordinary civilians in every possible way, and then projecting that as forms of his soothing operation to the outside world.

    The world may forget, but Tamils will never forget the true face of the civilisation of 21st century, the world has shown to them, writes the medical worker in his notes.

  • Sri Lanka floats LTTE revival stories, keeps Tamils incarcerated
    Sri Lanka’s defence secretary has warned the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are being revived at local and international levels and would attempt to challenge the government again.
    Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who is also the brother of President Mahinda Rajapakse, cautioned that the LTTE would make a fresh attempt to resume arms smuggling and train cadres overseas and bring them in boats, reported the Island newspaper.
    The LTTE would also try to open sea routes for their leaders to move in and out as they did some time ago, the paper further reported Rajapakse as saying during an address to navy cadre at Trincomalee base on Friday, August 28.
    Negligence and shortcomings on Sri Lankan navy’s part would be catastrophic, the paper quoted him as adding.
    “Urging the navy to be vigilant of the impending challenge, he said that the LTTE should not be allowed to raise its head again,” the paper reported.
    “He said the battle-field victory achieved at a very heavy price should not be allowed to be reversed. But that would entirely depend on the continuation of existing security arrangements, he said, reminding the navy that it would have a significant role to play in meeting the looming threat,” the newspaper reported.
    Rajapakse was further quoted as saying that the navy would have to thwart LTTE plans by setting up bases along the coast and maintaining constant surveillance.
    In recent weeks numbers of Sri Lankan ministers and officials have come out with warnings of a LTTE revival, whilst the military continues to claim regular discoveries of arms caches in Vanni and arrests of LTTE leaders in the camps in Colombo.
    Political analysts say the Sri Lankan government, which announced that the LTTE has been crushed and, even few weeks ago, declared that the organisation will never be able to raise its head again, is floating these stories to allow it to keep Tamils incarcerated in camps citing security concerns.
    One of the reasons given by the Sri Lankan government for refusing to release the nearly 300,000 civilians interred in camps in Vavuniya is that they are still ‘weeding out former Tigers’.
    As Sri Lanka increasingly comes under pressure from the international community to free the Tamils held in barbed wired camps, the frequency of LTTE leaders’ arrests and arms cache finds have also risen.

    In the space of one week Sri Lankan police have claimed the arrest of two ‘prominent’ LTTE leaders and a major weapons haul.
    In one of the latest incidents, acting on civilian information, a LTTE leader, who led a 40-cadre group at Wellamulliwaikkal area in the final battle, was arrested from a tourist hotel in Mount Lavinia on Tuesday, September 9, according to Sri Lankan police.
    In a separate incident, a LTTE intelligence wing leader named Arulmozhi was arrested by Sri Lankan security forces inside the Manik Farm camp, Sri Lankan police claimed.
    On the arms cache front, Sri Lankan police claimed that a large stock of arms and ammunition was unearthed from Vellaimullivaikkal on Wednesday September 10, based on information provided by LTTE cadres.

    Military Spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said Task Force VIII launched a substantial search operation in Puthukudiyiruppu and Sugandipuram areas and recovered a haul of arms. 3Referer:http://www.tamilguard0A“Police uncovered 18 T56 assault rifles, three dismantled T56 rifles, 8,000 T56 ammunition, three T56 magazines, four 0.22 weapons, a T81 rifle, three snipers, two 97 type weapons, a female suicide kit, a claymore mine weighing 15kg, six claymore stands, seven hand grenades produced by the LTTE, a body part of a 12.7mm barrel, an MPMG body group, 5,000 of 5.56mm ammunition, 4,600 MPMG ammunition, 425 of 12.7mm ammunition, 140 of 17.5mm ammunition, 32 of 9mm pistol ammunition and a 40mm grenade launcher bullet. Troops uncovered 200 GPMG ammunition, an FNC weapon, 134 FNC ammunition, two FNC magazines, 83 AP mines, an MPMG body part, 34 of 29.5 MT gas cylinder, 150 of 12.5 MT gas cylinder and five of 2.5 MT gas cylinder,” reported government run Daily News newspaper.

  • Sri Lanka hits out at reports of GSP+ withdrawal
    Sri Lankan officials have responded angrily to reports that the European Union may withdraw the GSP+ concessions that Sri Lanka is currently entitled to.

    “Western countries should remember that economic power has shifted from the west to the east,” said Palita Kohona, Sri Lanka’s new ambassador to the UN.

    “New markets open up in the east. Our friends China, India, Japan, Korea, Iran … a whole range of countries [can help]," he was quoted as saying.

    The comments followed increasing speculation that the GSP plus program, worth around £1 billion in trade concessions, would be cancelled for Sri Lanka.

    "Sri Lanka has enough friends around the world. You have to realise that financial resources and power is no longer concentrated in one part of the world” continued Kohona.

    "We can handle the loss" said the diplomat, who was also recently refused a visa by the British High Commission.

    Dayan Jayatilleka, who was until last month, Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva, disagreed with Kohona’s comments.

    “The cold hard fact is that we need GSP Plus far more than the EU needs to give it to us”, wrote Jayatilleka in a newspaper column.

    “It is not our right or entitlement; it is what it is: a concession... conditional upon certain things because we sought eligibility upon certain claims and obtained the concession in the first place upon those claims and promises.”

    “Frankly, if you are asking someone else for their money or preferential access to their markets, you cannot really demand it and get stroppy when it is not forthcoming,” Jayatilleka rounded off his column in The Sunday Times in Sri Lanka.

    Meanwhile, The Sunday Times reported that President Mahinda Rajapakse was angered by another Sri Lankan ministry’s comments that “GSP Plus is very unlikely.”

    Sri Lanka’s Trade Ministry released a statement admitting it was “very unlikely” that they would keep hold of the GSP Plus concessions, following a damning 130-page report by the European Union.

    S Rannugge, secretary in Sri Lanka`s Export Development and International Trade Ministry, told Reuters that the review highlighted human rights abuses and torture allegations carried out by the Sri Lankan Government.

    The Sri Lankan President has now intervened in the matter.

    At a meeting at Temple Trees, Rajapakse appointed a team of four ministers to make a strong plea for the concessions not be withdrawn. The team comprises Export Development and International Trade Minister G.L. Peiris, Disaster Management and Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, Justice Minister Milinda Moragoda and Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama.

    “All four must work as a team and give me results,” the President told ministers.

    A final decision is due in October.

  • Sri Lanka finds common ground on human rights with ‘tested friend’ China

    Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse told a visiting Chinese communist party delegation that the two countries are tested friends and China will always have Sri Lanka’s unwavering support on the One-China policy.

    Rajapakse made the remarks on Friday, September 4, at a meeting with the visiting delegation of the Communist Party of China (CPC), led by a member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau and Party chief of China's Tianjin municipality Zhang Gaoli.
    The delegation was in Sri Lanka on a two-day good will visit at the invitation of Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) headed by Rajapakse.

    Rajapakse expressed his country’s gratitude to China for assistance provided towards the economic and social development of the island and declared the friendly relationship between the two countries has stood long test and the two countries are tested friends.
    Gaoli congratulated the massive achievement made by the Sri Lankan government on national reconciliation and the development of the country and thanked the Sri Lankan government for its firm support for the Chinese government's stance on the issues related to Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang and human rights.

    China’s diplomatic support helped Sri Lanka block a Human Rights Council resolution at the United Nations in May this year deploring the gross human rights abuses committed by the Sri Lanka security forces against Tamils.

    Gaoli also reaffirmed the Chinese government’s support for Rajapakse's efforts to defend Sri Lanka’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

    Meanwhile, a former Australian diplomat warned that western inaction over Sri Lanka’s intransigence in adhering to international humanitarian norms and shift towards China could be detrimental to Indian and western interests.

    Speaking at an event held at The University of Sydney last week, to launch of the Sri Lankan Human Rights project, a joint initiative between the Centre for Peace And Conflict Studies (CPACS) and the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) with the support of Amnesty International, Bruce Haigh warned that Sri Lanka may become “a vassal state of China.. not averse to carrying out acts of terror and in the future that may be directed towards India in ways to be determined by the Chinese".

  • BBC: UN patience wears thin in Sri Lanka
    The United Nations says it cannot continue to indefinitely fund the sprawling, overcrowded and militarized camp in which Sri Lanka has interned hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians.

    Speaking to the BBC, the UN's Sri Lanka chief, Neil Buhne, said people should be allowed to leave the barbed wire-ringed Manik Farm camp.

    Mr Buhne also criticised Sri Lanka’s denial of access for the International Red Cross to 10,000 Tamils whom the government calls LTTE suspects.

    Meanwhile the UN says it is extremely concerned for two staff members arrested by Sri Lankan authorities in June, being amid reports they were mistreated during the early days of their detention.

    Since the war ended in May, the Sri Lankan authorities have refused to let anyone leave this vast camp apart from some young children, elderly people and priests. Some priests have reportedly refused to leave whilst the remaining people are not free to go.

    UN agencies help fund and run the camps but there are signs the UN is running out of patience, the BBC reported Friday.

    "The best solution is obviously that as many people leave as soon as possible," the UN's Sri Lanka chief, Neil Buhne, told the BBC.

    "And that the site can become - for the people who have no place else to go - that it becomes an open site."

    International rights groups have said holding the civilians is an illegal form of collective punishment and urged the government to allow them to leave to live with relatives, friends or host families in the area.

    The Sri Lankan government says it cannot release the civilians until it finishes screening them for potential LTTE fighters, and until land mines are cleared from their villages in the north.

    But rights workers told the Associated Press the screening process has dragged on longer than expected.

    Also Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it is being denied access to the rehabilitation centers where surrendered LTTE cadres and those the government accuses of being LTTE supporters are held.

    The spokeswoman for the ICRC in Colombo, Sarasi Wijeratne confirmed the baring of access to the Daily Mirror Friday, though other aid workers say this actually began several weeks ago.

    UN's Sri Lanka chief Neil Buhne criticism of the ICRC’s being barred comes amid persistent reports of abductions, torture and summary executions in the prison camps and Vavuniya residents’ accounts of bodies being buried in cluster graves in the region.

    Earlier this week the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, criticised the Sri Lankan government's decision to expel the UN children's agency spokesman in the country.

    UNICEF spokesman James Elder regularly spoke to the media on the plight of children caught up in the conflict, but Sri Lanka spokesperson told BBC "James Elder's visa has been cancelled over his propaganda in support of the Tigers."

    Mr Ban’s office said in a statement: "The secretary-general strongly regrets the decision of the Sri Lankan government to expel Mr Elder."

    The UN chief "expresses his full confidence in the work of the United Nations in Sri Lanka, which includes making public statements when necessary in an effort to save lives and prevent grave humanitarian problems".

    Mr Ban said that the UN was "working impartially to assist the people of Sri Lanka and the government should be supporting and co-operating with its efforts."

  • Le Monde calls for Sri Lanka to ‘stop’

    "After winning the war, the Sri Lankan regime is in the process of losing the peace. Following the historic, but bloody and distasteful victory, against the armed struggle of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa could be magnanimous and reach out to the Tamil minority and open the way for national reconciliation. But Rajapakse has chosen another path, the path of domination...Under the tents of the refugee camps tomorrow's Tigers may already be rising to mount a future rebellion," warned France's popular daily, Le Monde in an editorial last Thursday.

    Excerpts from the translated editorial follows:

    More than three months after the end of the war, some 280 000 Tamil refugees are kept as prisoners behind of barbed wire, unhealthy and overcrowded camps.

    Official reasons for the delay are that the Government is screening the civilians to identify combatants and to protect the village refugess from the mines planted by the LTTE.

    These excuses are fanciful. The truth is, the Sri Lankan government seeks to control this population [Tamil refugees] and to silence the refugees who were witnesses to the horror of the last weeks of the conflict.

    International assistance to camps will be forthcoming only if the Sri Lankan regime shows urgency in weeding out the suspects and release. For proof, Sri Lanka did not hesitate to remove and torture two local staff of the United Nations.

    NGOs and UN must confront an existential question: did they help a population in distress or are they complicit in a large-scale incarceration? This question has become increasingly complex as the rainy season approaches, which could sow chaos inside the camps. Already in the month of August, rain has washed away the tents of thousands of refugees, and hundreds of families are inconvenienced and agitating inside the camps.

    Instead of making peace, President Rajapaksa and his brother Gotabhaya, Secretary of Defense, are exhibiting vengeance: they have declared the war against the civil society.

    In recent weeks, a renowned Tamil journalist was sentenced to twenty years in prison; a human rights activist has received death threats; a video seemingly showing Sri Lankan soldiers executing naked men convinced the UN to consider investigation.

    The Sri Lankan Government is in a position of strength. It has developed dependent friendships with with the least recommendable regimes on the planet and has had to deal with minor retaliatory measures on the part of the Western powers.

    The LTTE and its local supporters are destroyed. But, under the tents of the refugee camps, tomorrow's Tigers may already be rising to mount a future rebellion.

  • BOX STORY: Venerable Thera refused Canadian visa

    The Canadian embassy in Colombo has refused visa to a Buddhist monk due to the applicant’s passport displaying the titles Venerable and Thera, according to media reports.

    Ven Havpe Somananda Thera, the chief incumbent of Sri Maha Vihara, Pamankada who had been invited by a Buddhist monk in Canada to attend a religious function there was asked by the Canadian embassy officials to remove the titles Venerable and Thera from his passport if he wanted a visa to enter Canada.

  • TNA candidates receive death threats, Ruling party men confiscate voting cards

    The Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) said Wednesday, July 29 that it received complaints that three candidates of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) contesting the election to the Vavuniyaa urban Council have been issued with death threats.

    The candidates are V.Paranjothy, N.Mathiharan and P.Sellathurai, according to a press release by the CMEV. The candidates of the TNA have been contesting the Vavuniyaa polls under the banner of Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchchi (ITAK) in “HOUSE” symbol.

     

    Meanwhile, TNA Jaffna district parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran alleged that the ruling party contestants in Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) election had forcibly confiscated more than 1500 voting cards from residents in Kozhumpuththurai, Ariyaalai and Eachchamoaddai area in Jaffna, in a press meet held in his Jaffna office Saturday, August 1.

     

    TNA parliamentarians Gejendrakumar Ponnambalam and Solomon Cyril along with ITAK chief candidate Mudiyappu Remedias attended the press meet.

     

    “Ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) persons who go house by house compare the voting cards with the voters list and forcibly take away cards saying that they will be used to vote for the ITAK ‘House’ symbol if left with the residents,” Suresh Premachandran said.

    “40% of the 1,00,400 registered voters in JMC area have been displaced and it is their votes that are going to be rigged and the JMC election on 8 August will be certainly one filled with malpractices and rigging,” he added.

    “We will make public the names of persons going around confiscating voting cards in the press meet that is to be held in Jaffna when our parliamentary leader Sampanthan comes to Jaffna next week,” he informed.

    “We are also aware of arrangements being made to bring down people from the islets of Jaffna in buses for the purpose of impersonation,” he said.

    Meanwhile, Douglas Devananda, Minister and General Secretary of Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) denied anything to do with the persons confiscating the voting cards, in a press release Saturday, August 1.

     

    Jaffna University Students’ Union (JUSU), in a recent press release, has appealed the people to vote for TK House symbol saying that only those who care for the Vanni displaced persons and their wellbeing should be returned as their representatives.

  • State terror' in local elections

    Police authorities in northern Sri Lanka have rejected accusations by opposition parties that the government is terrorising the region in the run up to Vavuniya Urban Council elections.

     

    The main opposition, United National Party (UNP), says party's organisers are continuously threatened and intimidated by pro-government supporters.

     

    UNP Vanni district organiser PA Karunadasa told BBC Sandeshaya that people travelling in motor bicycles without number plates prevented their supporters from canvassing.

     

    "We know that thugs have arrived in Vavuniya with government ministers. It is state terrorism. We are urging the police to stop this," he said.

     

    Ministers 'with thugs'

     

    The police, however, denied the accusation.

     

    "There is no state terrorism here. We can't accept that accusation," said Nimal Lewke, the Senior Deputy Inspector General (DIG) in charge of the Northern Province.

     

    Elections for the Vavuniya UC and Jaffna Municipal Council are scheduled to be held on 08 August.

     

    In Vavuniya, 24626 voters are registered to elect 11 councillors.

    DIG Lewke says the police won't allow anybody, apart from the police and military, to carry arms in the north.

     

    But it differs from the ground reality, according to UNP regional leaders.

     

    "Although nobody carries weapons during the day, our supporters regularly are threatened with death and intimidated at nights," says PA Karunadasa.

     

    "Please do not use media for undue accusations," responds the senior police official.

    DIG Lewke urges those affected to lodge complaints with the police, instead.

     

    However the political activists say they are reluctant to make complaints. "We are afraid to make complaints to the police and give our details. We do not know what will happen to us as a consequence."

     

    "A school principal and businessman were recently killed in Vavuniya but the police are yet to arrest any suspect," says the UNP organiser.
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