Tamil Justice

International Crisis Group  – (09/06) -  Bringing Displaced Persons into Peace Processes: Good for Them, Good for Peace

Some 26 million people have been driven from their homes and forced to resettle into another part of their own country due to conflict, natural disasters, development projects, or other reasons. The United Nations recently launched guidelines for integrating internal displacement into peace processes and agreements. Donald Steinberg, Crisis Group’s Deputy President for Policy, served on an advisory panel for those guidelines, and talks about the plight of internally displaced persons and the importance of empowering them to build lasting peace.

Watch Louise Arbour speak here on the need for a war crime inquiry in Sri Lanka and GoSL’s deliberate shelling of hospitals and civilians during the final stages of the war.

Inner City Press – On Sri Lanka, IMF Calls War Crimes Report Of Concern, Tranche Turns on Budget?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, May 20 — Asked about Sri Lanka, IMF spokesperson Caroline Atkinson on May 20 said, “on the war crimes report, yes of course we’re aware of that, and that’s something that’s of concern and interest.”

Inner City Press had asked about the IMF’s current visit to northern Sri Lanka, the status of the delayed third tranche of the IMF program, and this week’s International Crisis Group report on war crimes.

Despite predictions that the third tranche will not be disbursed any time soon due to the policies of the Rajapaksa government, Ms. Atkinson on Thursday deferred answering, stating that “we have a mission in the field and that will conclude soon… by the end of the week so that means probably tomorrow.” More

The Economist – Putting the raj in Rajapaksa

Reconciliation takes a back seat as a band of brothers settles in

May 20th 2010 | DELHI | From The Economist print edition

THERE is no stopping the remorseless ascent of Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s president. A year ago this week his government routed the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) after a 26-year civil war. This January, after a campaign featuring songs lauding him as a “king”, his grateful citizens re-elected him in a landslide. His party then cantered to victory in a parliamentary poll in April. His main rival in the presidential race, Sarath Fonseka, a former army chief, faces a court-martial and poses no threat. Now the president seems intent on an extraordinary concentration of power into his family’s hands, and on its prolongation.

Mr Rajapaksa himself, besides being president, is minister of defence, finance and planning, ports and aviation, and highways. In all, he is directly responsible for 78 institutions. One, the defence ministry, is a condominium with his brother, Gotabaya, the defence secretary. Besides control of the armed forces, police and coast guard, it has expanded its remit to take in immigration and emigration, as well as, curiously, the Urban Development Authority and the Land Reclamation and Development Corporation.

Another Rajapaksa brother, Basil, is economic-development minister and senior presidential adviser, with oversight, among other things, of wildlife conservation and the boards of both investment- and tourism-promotion. He also runs a presidential task force set up to develop the war-ravaged north and east. More

The Economist – “The Sri Lanka option” Friends like these

The rush to learn lessons from the obliteration of the Tamil Tigers

May 20th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

LITTLE Sri Lanka is rarely a model of anything. But since it crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam its government has found itself in an unfamiliar position. Some of the world’s less savoury regimes are beating a path to its door to study “the Sri Lanka option”.

Last November, Myanmar’s military dictator, Than Shwe, who rarely travels abroad, visited the island “so that his regime can apply any lessons learned to its efforts against the ethnic groups in Burma,” says Benedict Rogers, a biographer of General Than. In May last year at a meeting of regional defence ministers in Singapore, Myanmar’s deputy minister made the link explicit, saying the world had witnessed a victory over terrorism in Sri Lanka but had forgotten about the insurgency in his country.

In October Thailand’s prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, held talks with his Sri Lankan counterpart about the lessons of the Tigers’ defeat (for handling a Muslim insurgency in southern Thailand, not the protests cleared this week in Bangkok). In March a military delegation from Bangladesh met Sri Lanka’s army chief, to swap notes on what he called Sri Lanka’s “successful completion of the war for peace”. Behind the scenes, hawkish generals and politicians from Colombia to Israel seem to be using Sri Lanka’s experience to justify harsher anti-terror operations. More

Reuters : Sri Lanka’s detained ex-army chief denies war crimes

Sri Lanka’s detained former army chief on Thursday said there were no war crimes committed under his command but was not aware whether orders came from elsewhere.

Rights groups this week took advantage of the one-year anniversary of the end of the 25-year war to make a renewed push for a probe into possible war crimes violations in the final months of the conflict with the Tamil Tiger separatists.

The Age (18/05) – Military blamed in Sri Lanka

ABC Radio Australia (18/05) – Calls for new probe into end of Sri Lankan civil war – Read transcript & listen to interview

The Independent (UK 18/05) – Sri Lanka accused of war crimes in final onslaught

The Telegraph (UK 19/05) - A year after the defeat of the LTTE, human rights are still pivotal in Sri Lanka

Al Jazeera English (18/05) – Fighting impunity in Sri Lanka

New York Times (20/05) – New Accusations of War Crimes in Sri Lanka

Hindustan Times (20/05) – Sri Lanka ‘donor fatigue’ warning

The Hindu (19/05) – MF team visits war-torn Northern Province of Sri Lanka

Time (19/05) - Report: The Sins of Sri Lanka’s Great War Victory

AlJazeera (19/05) – Sri Lanka marks victory anniversary

SBS (19/05)  - Deported Sri Lankans ‘beaten and killed’

The Age (19/05) – Sri Lanka not safe for deportees: group

OneIndia (19/05) - Pro-LTTE activists in Chennai pay homage to the Tamilians killed in Sri Lanka

BBC (19/05) - Sri Lanka former Tamil Tiger ‘mass wedding’ planned

** GoSL propaganda machine stoops to a new low:  AFP (18/05) - Rain ruins Sri Lanka celebrations marking Tigers’ defeat

BBC (18/05) – Sri Lanka ‘donor fatigue’ warning

Amnesty (17/05) -UN must investigate Sri Lanka Rights Violations

SMH – Sri Lanka under fire for killing thousands

by Matt Wade

A YEAR after Sri Lankan troops crushed Tamil Tiger rebels on the battlefield, the International Crisis Group has accused the military of killing tens of thousands of Tamil civilians in the closing stages of the conflict.

An investigative report by the Brussels-based group blames both the army and the rebels for atrocities but attributes most of the civilian deaths during the war’s bloody conclusion to government bombardment of crowded ”no-fire zones”.

”All but a small portion of these deaths were due to government shelling,” the report said.

Last May Sri Lankan troops routed Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) forces that had waged a violent 26-year struggle for a Tamil homeland.

As government troops surrounded the rebels, about 300,000 Tamil civilians were trapped amid heavy fighting on a narrow strip of coast in the country’s north-east.

”Evidence gathered by Crisis Group provides reasonable grounds to believe that during these months the security forces intentionally and repeatedly shelled civilians, hospitals and humanitarian operations,” the report said. More

SMH - Sri Lanka’s ethnic divisions still deep and dangerous

by Matt Wade

The President shows little sign of using his dominant political power to push through serious political reforms, writes Matt Wade.

IN THE dying days of Sri Lanka’s civil war, the army liked to show off the military hardware it had captured from the retreating Tamil Tigers. During carefully managed tours to the front line, foreign journalists were taken to inspect neat rows of Kalashnikovs, missiles, landmines and artillery cannon.

A battle tank was the most impressive trophy; the most chilling a small wardrobe of suicide jackets. Photographs found with dead rebels showed proud young cadres standing with the reclusive Tamil Tiger supremo, Velupillai Prabhakaran. One fighter had a printed card commemorating Prabhakaran’s last birthday in November 2008. More

The Australian – Report damns Tamil returns

A DAMNING international report rejects the Rudd government’s assertion that it is now safe for Tamil asylum-seekers to return home and says that tens of thousands of unarmed Tamil civilians were killed in the final months of Sri Lanka’s civil war – a toll far higher than previous estimates.

And it urges several countries including Australia not to deport suspected former Tamil Tiger fighters, saying that would put their lives in danger.

The report by the International Crisis Group alleges after an eight-month war crimes investigation that industrial-scale slaughter of civilians by the Sri Lankan government included targeting of hospitals, safe havens and foreign aid groups to remove foreign observers and crush the Tamil Tigers (LTTE).

The Sri Lankan government had a long history of intimidation of critics and those with knowledge of atrocities, said the ICG, a major Brussels-based conflict resolution group funded by several governments.

The report includes a specific recommendation to Australia, Canada, the US, Britain, France and the EU that they: “Do not extradite LTTE suspects to Sri Lanka unless guarantees of humane treatment and fair trials are in place.”

Business Week – Sri Lanka War Abuses Killed Thousands, Group Says

Indian Express – US-based rights group claims Lankan forces killed civilians

Financial Times - Pressure on Sri Lanka for war crimes probe

The New York Times – Sri Lanka Forces Blamed for Most Civilian Deaths

by Lydia Polgreen

Tens of thousands of Tamil civilians died in the last, bloody months of Sri Lanka’s civil war, the International Crisis Group said in an investigative report to be released Monday, most of them as a result of government shelling of areas that were supposed to be safe zones.

The report, which cites witness testimony, satellite images, documents and other evidence, calls for a wide-reaching international investigation into what it calls atrocities committed in the last months of the Sri Lankan government’s war against the Tamil Tiger insurgency.

The war ended a year ago, when the Tigers’ top leadership was killed on a narrow strand of beach in northeastern Sri Lanka, capping a two-decade armed struggle by a group that pioneered some of the ugliest insurgent tactics in the world, including female suicide bombers and child soldiers.

Because the government barred independent journalists and most humanitarian workers from the war zone, the death toll of the final months of fighting, when at least 300,000 Tamil civilians were pinned down on a beach, caught between the rebels and government forces, is not known. More