SMH - Tamil civilians were massacred: report – Also in The Age here
SBS - Changes to Sri Lankan refugee claims urged
NineMSN - Tamil civilians were massacred: report
Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies’ Media Release – Rudd Government should listen to international opinion – and its own travel advice
Associate Professor and Director Dr Jake Lynch is an advisor to the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice.
The Australian : Panglossian picture
WHAT extraordinary efforts are underway to airbrush the grim realities of post-war Sri Lanka. Sergei DeSilva-Ranasinghe (“Beware of asylum-seekers bearing tales of woe”, Commentary, 7/4) makes a series of misleading claims, distorting evidence or withholding chunks that do not fit his Panglossian picture.
More than 76,000 internally displaced people languish in illegal internment camps where even the country’s own oppressed media regularly report complaints of rape, mysterious “disappearances” and extra-judicial killings. Where reporters have managed to gather evidence from on the ground, it directly contradicts DeSilva-Ranasinghe’s account. And, of course, he ignores the Sinhala colonisation of Tamil areas, as new Buddhist shrines and permanent garrisons spring up on sites flattened by government bombing.
Far more Sri Lankan Tamils have sought refuge in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu than come to Australia, but the Indian government, which is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention, has no international obligations towards them, so restricts their movements and access to proper housing. Above all, there is no meaningful move towards prosecuting those responsible for war crimes.
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A defeated population, cowering in fear, would recognise no part of DeSilva-Ranasinghe’s travesty.
Jake Lynch and Gobie Rajalingam, Co-conveners, Sri Lanka Human Rights Project, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney
An initiative of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Project (Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, The University of Sydney) and Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine.
This letter to the editor were written by the conveners of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Project @ Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, The University of Sydney
The Age (13/02) – Show Your Concern
MANY thanks for your editorial (”Sri Lanka’s ripples go far beyond the island”, The Age, 11/2) on the intensifying repression in Sri Lanka. Canberra has restricted itself to tokenistic responses out of a wrong-headed belief that things will ”settle down” and an overly narrow conception of Australian interests. Instead, it should join the European Union in backing the call, made by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, for an independent international investigation of war crimes allegations and in withholding trade concessions unless there is improvement in the human rights situation.
Meanwhile, the rest of us have a chance to register stronger concern. The 1970 cancellation of apartheid South Africa’s tour of England showed the strength of sporting boycotts in inducing social change. We urge you not to attend the cricket when the Sri Lankan team visits Australia later this year, write to Cricket Australia asking that the tour be cancelled and unite for human rights when official diplomacy fails.
Jake Lynch, Gobie Rajalingam and Brami Jegan, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, The University of Sydney, NSW
The Wire – Sri Lankan opposition leader arrested
Produced by Jacinta Patterson
In Sri Lanka, the main opposition leader has been arrested after the government accused him of what it termed ‘military offences’. Sri Lanka held its general election last month – the first since the end of the country’s lengthy civil war. Former military leader General Sarath Fonseca ran an unsuccessful campaign against his former commander-in-chief, President Mahendra Rajapaksa. His arrest came just hours after he told reporters he’d be willing to give evidence about war crimes he alleges took place during the conflict. Featured in this story: Dr Sam Pari, spokesperson for the Australian Tamil Congress; Dr Jake Lynch, director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University.
Associate Professor Jake Lynch is Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Convener of the CPACS Sri Lanka Human Rights Project, and is an adviser to the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice
Transcend Media Service – Peace and Justice
“Peace is not the absence of war”, Martin Luther King told us: “it is the presence of justice”. King’s legacy transmitted itself directly into the mantra of African-American activists, outraged over the beating, by LA police officers, of the black motorist, Rodney King, in 1991: “No justice, no peace”, they chanted. It’s an important answer to a familiar question: what is peace? Of course, another, equally tricky question nestles within it, like matryoshka dolls: what is justice?
A Reverend Mpbambami told the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission a story about two friends, Peter and John, who fell out when Peter stole John’s bicycle. Later, Peter said to John: “Let’s talk about reconciliation”. John’s reply resonates still: “We cannot talk about reconciliation until my bicycle is back”.
It so happens that providing bicycles is the aim of a significant ‘people-to-people’ aid effort, now underway here in Sydney, to bring relief to the Tamil people of Sri Lanka, where they are used for the simple but vital job of transporting fish to market; but in Peter and John’s story, the machine is more important for its symbolic value, of course. It captures the sense of restitution that is a precursor to the willingness to live in peace.
In the Sri Lankan case, an unofficial court, set up in Dublin and conducted by the Milan-based Permanent People’s Tribunal, has just delivered its verdict: the Sri Lanka Government is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The tribunal also concluded that the charge of genocide warrants further investigations. Eye-witnesses included several escapees from the final week of the Sri Lankan offensive in the Mullaitivu ‘No Fire Zone’, at the end of the civil war in May last year, where more than 20,000 Tamil civilians were allegedly slaughtered by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) using heavy weapons on them.
This chimes not only with evidence provided by outsiders, but also allegations that have been exchanged between candidates in the Sri Lankan election, due to be held shortly. A top aide to President Mahinda Rajapakse disclosed recently that Colombo ordered a halt to the use of heavy weapons only in April, two months after a UN envoy was promised that such armaments would not be used.
Former foreign minister and key opposition leader Mangala Samaraweera seized on the disclosure by the aide, Lalith Weeratunga, who said the use of heavy weapons was eventually stopped as part of a political deal with the Indian government.
The disclosure “indicates that despite claims to the contrary, both to the public of this country and to (the) UN… in February 2009, in fact the government had sanctioned the use of heavy weapons until April, when the Indian general election was in full swing,” Samaraweera said in a statement. More
Associate Professor Jake Lynch is Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Convener of the CPACS Sri Lanka Human Rights Project and is an adviser to the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice.
Israel is using a panoply of legal and administrative measures, backed by the ever-present threat of force, to squeeze out Palestinian families who’ve lived for generations in East Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem Centre for Women is a Palestinian NGO helping and empowering women to access their rights and resist the ethnic cleansing of their communities.
From Associate Professor Jake Lynch, Director, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Chair of Organizing Committee, IPRA conference 2010, Executive Member, Sydney Peace Foundation, Convener of the CPACS Sri Lanka Human Rights Project
The announcement by the Sri Lankan government, that it is closing the internment camps where thousands of Tamils were illegally detained, is testimony to the power of international pressure, from the UN, from governments, civil society and some in the media.
The crisis over the war, the protection of civilians and the human rights of detainees must now become an opportunity to recognise and negotiate over the Tamils’ assertion of their right to self-determination.
And that must be a signal to sustain and intensify the pressure, not relax it.
