Elders member Lakhdar Brahimi is a member of the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice
The Elders – Sri Lanka’s disturbing actions met by ‘deafening global silence’
 |
No real progress on reconciliation |
|
Persecution of critics is ‘terrifying’ |
|
See quotes from Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan, Martti Ahtisaari, Lakhdar Brahimi and Mary Robinson below |
We remember the 3000 Tamil lives that perished; the 150,000 rendered homeless; as a result of the state backed anti – Tamil pogrom in the island of Sri Lanka.
We remember the victims of July 1983; the unspeakable tragedies endured by them; each innocent, but for the crime of being born Tamil.
We remember the victims of today; those left without recourse to law or aid…
…and finally, we remember that hope for the helpless lies in the strength of our voices.
Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=101274666594053
Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=100714736649612&ref=ts
ABC (28/06) – IMF Grants Third Tranche of $2.6 Billion Sri Lanka Loan
The International Monetary Fund will pay out the delayed third tranche of a $2.6 billion loan to Sri Lanka, saying the government was planning to tackle its weak finances in the 2010 budget to be announced on Tuesday.
The IMF in February had delayed the payment after the government missed its 2009 deficit reduction targets and said that domestic budget borrowing — consistent with a deficit target of 7 percent of gross domestic product — was exceeded by a substantial amount.
“Despite the weaker-than-programed 2009 fiscal performance, the government’s 2010 budget proposal, if carried out, would significantly address past fiscal slippages,” Naoyuki Shinohara, IMF deputy managing director and acting chair, said in a statement after a review of Sri Lanka’s economic performance.
AFP – S.Lanka to block visits by UN probing war crimes
Sri Lanka will ban visits by the three-member United Nations panel investigating alleged human rights abuses in the final months of the island’s civil war, a senior minister said Thursday.
…”We will not issue them with visas. We will not allow them into this country,” External Affairs Minister Gamini Lakshman Peiris told reporters…
AFP – ‘UN war crimes panel chief criticises S.Lanka ban’
The head of a UN panel probing alleged war crimes during Sri Lanka’s civil war has criticised Colombo’s decision to ban him and colleagues from the country, a report said Friday.
…”Everybody loses out if we cannot go to Sri Lanka, it will make it harder for the truth to be unearthed,” Darusman told the BBC, describing the ban as “most unfortunate”…
AFP – Sri Lanka rejects ‘insulting’ EU trade conditions
Sri Lanka Thursday trashed “insulting” EU demands that it make a written undertaking to improve its human rights record in exchange for trade benefits.
Government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said Colombo also rejected a July 1 deadline issued by the European Union to agree to a host of other conditions to qualify for preferential trade tariffs.
“These conditions are unacceptable. They are an insult to every citizen of this country,” Rambukwella told reporters in Colombo. “We must put the EU demand in the dustbin.”
…The EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, has insisted on “significant improvements on the effective implementation of the human rights conventions” for the island to continue enjoying the trade benefits.
The EU trade scheme gives 16 poor nations preferential access to the vast European market in return for following strict commitments on a variety of social and rights issues.
These benefits will be withdrawn on August 15 unless Sri Lanka makes a written commitment by July 1, according to the EU…
TJ bloggers at the rally today said there was between 500-800 people at the rally
SMH – Gillard urged to act on refugee claims
Rights activists have rallied in Sydney urging Prime Minister Julia Gillard to immediately end the freeze on refugee claims for people from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.
Hundreds of protesters, including Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young and author Tom Keneally, gathered in the CBD on Saturday demanding a more humane approach to refugees.
The Refugee Action Coalition says it wants to see an end to offshore processing and the closure of detention centres.
ABC – Gillard urged to act on asylum seekers
A protest in Sydney has called on the Federal Government to act more fairly and justly in dealing with asylum seekers.
Around 150 people rallied at Sydney’s Town Hall today to urge Prime Minister Julia Gillard to close Christmas Island and end mandatory detention of refugees.
Author Thomas Keneally told the protest that a bipartisan approach needs to be reached by the country’s leaders.
“I ask all politicians of goodwill on both sides of the house to commit themselves to this cause,” he said.
“Open our gates to a reasonable degree and advance Australia not with hysteria, not with a snarl, but with fraternity.”
The following motion was proposed by Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young and passed with support from all major parties in Australian Senate on Thursday 24 June 2010.
That the Senate:
(a) notes:
(i) the recent report from the International Crisis Group on War Crimes in Sri Lanka;
(ii) this report recommends, among other things, for the United Nations to conduct an independent international inquiry into the alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka during the last year of the conflict;
(b) welcomes:
(i) The United Nations Secretary General’s establishment of an Advisory Panel on Sri Lanka;
(ii) The establishment in Sri Lanka of a Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission, and urges the Sri Lankan Government to ensure the Commission operates in an independent way; and
(c) reaffirms the importance of credible investigations into all allegations of violations of human rights, and
(d) Calls on the Australian Government to support an effective process of national reconciliation, to allow Sri Lanka to move forward after years of conflict.
Reuters – Sri Lanka rules out visas for UN war crimes panel
* UN panel not needed, Sri Lanka says
* Sri Lanka also rejects EU demands
* EU wanted written rights reform pledges
Sri Lanka on Thursday ruled out giving visas to members of a U.N. panel looking into possible war crimes and said it would not accept European Union conditions for extending trade concessions.
Sri Lanka for more than a year has defied Western pressure over accountability for potential war crimes and human rights violations in the last stages of its quarter-century war with the separatist Tamil Tigers, which it won in May 2009.
Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris said the government would not issue visas to the U.N. panel, which the world body says is merely there to advise Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on methods of accountability, and is not an investigative body. [ID:nSGE65M05J]
“We will not issue visas to the panel. We don’t think we need them,” Peiris told reporters.
Sri Lanka has its own commission looking into the last seven years of the war, and insists that despite a three-decade history of ineffectual local investigations into rights violations, this one will uncover any wrongdoing.
Rights groups took advantage of the victory anniversary to renew a push for a war crimes probe, saying there was evidence — which they did not make public — that both the government and Tigers were responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.
They hope that the U.N. panel will provide a roadmap to a full international inquiry. Sri Lanka denies it ever targeted civilians and says the accusations have been maliciously manipulated or fabricated by Tiger supporters.
NO TO EU DEMANDS
Peiris also said the cabinet had reviewed the EU’s offer to extend access to the Generalised System of Preferences Plus trade scheme, due to be withdrawn on Aug. 15 unless the Indian Ocean nation made a written pledge to certain rights reforms. [ID:nSGE65L06T]
“We were not prepared to obtain these concessions at any cost. That’s not the attitude of a self-respecting government,” Peiris told reporters.
That will cost Sri Lanka about 100 million euros ($123 million) annually, with its biggest trade partner for garments, one of its top foreign exchange earners, and other products.
Among the EU demands were lifting of wartime emergency laws that grant the government wide arrest powers and implementation of a constitutional amendment that would make the police and judiciary independent from presidential influence, Peiris said.
“These are matters in which the judgment must be made by an elected government. These are not matters in which any foreign government can take decisions, he said.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government says the Western push for accountability is fuelled by Tamil Tiger supporters in the diaspora and is hypocritical, given Sri Lanka was fighting a group on U.S. and EU terrorism lists.
Washington and Britain, he has said, cannot point an accusing finger over civilian deaths or human rights, given the thousands of civilians killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and indefinite detentions of terrorism suspects.
AFP – S.Lanka furious as UN’s Ban names war crimes panel
Sri Lanka is “deeply unhappy” at a move by UN chief Ban Ki-moon to name a panel to look into alleged war crimes committed during the final months of the island’s civil war, an official said Monday.
…”Our troops carried a gun in one hand and a copy of the human rights charter in the other,” the president said. “Our guns were not fired at a single civilian.”
Reuters – U.N.’s Ban names advisory panel on Sri Lanka war
U.N. Secretary-General on Tuesday announced the formation of a three-member panel to advise him on whether any crimes were committed in Sri Lanka during the final months of its war against Tamil Tiger rebels.
The Sri Lankan government had urged Ban not to appoint the advisory panel, saying it has its own commission to investigate possible human rights violations at the end of its war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam separatists in May 2009.
The panel will be chaired by Indonesia’s former Attorney General Marzuki Darusman, U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters. Darusman was also recently named the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in North Korea.
The other two members of the panel, Nesirky said, are Yasmin Sooka, a human rights expert from South Africa, and Steven Ratner, a U.S. lawyer who advised the United Nations on how to bring the Khmer Rouge to justice in Cambodia.
Nesirky said Ban’s panel “will advise him on the issue of accountability with regard to any alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the conflict in Sri Lanka.”
“The panel hopes to cooperate with concerned officials in Sri Lanka,” he said.
“ROADMAP” FOR AN INVESTIGATION
Amid heavy Western pressure, Ban has insisted the panel must go forward despite Sri Lanka’s urging against it, and assertion that it is a violation of its sovereignty.
Peggy Hicks of the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Ban’s panel was necessary since “the Sri Lankan government is unwilling to seriously investigate war-time human rights abuses.” She added that she hoped the panel would produce “a roadmap for an international investigation.”
Hicks urged Ban not to waste any time getting the long-delayed panel to work. “It’s important that there be no further delays,” she said.
HRW and other rights groups took advantage of last month’s first anniversary of the defeat of the Tamil Tigers to renew pressure for a probe of the end of the war, when they say tens of thousands of civilians died in the bloody final battles.
The government denies any war crimes took place, but rights groups say that both the government and the Tamil Tigers were guilty of human rights violations that resulted in large numbers of civilian deaths.
Nesirky said that the panel was not a formal investigative body and would be available to the Sri Lankan government, should they choose to take advantage of it. The group will have four months from the time it starts to complete its work.
If the panel decides to travel to Sri Lanka to interview witnesses and conduct research, it will need the permission of the government, Nesirky said.
Last month, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa named an eight-person “Commission on Lessons Learned and Reconciliation” to look into the last seven years of the war. U.N. officials say the world body is interested in its progress.
