Tamil Justice

IPS – How the War Gave Tamil Women More Space

By Feizal Samath

Whenever Sri Lankan rights activist Shereen Xavier attends a meeting related to her work in this war-battered northern capital, she makes sure to be dressed in a sari, a traditional gown worn by South Asian women.

“To be accepted by society here, you need to be seen in a sari,” says Xavier, executive director of the Home for Human Rights (HHR). But back in the confines of her office, the Western-educated Xavier feels comfortable enough to wear trousers. More

BBC – Five bodies unearthed in Kilinochchi

Five bodies recovered from a toilet pit in Ganeshapuram, Kilinochchi has been sent to Vavunia for further identification.

Tamil National Alliance, Jaffna District Member of Parliament S.Sridharan said that the gender of the five bodies were unidentifiable due to their state of decomposition.

The post-mortem was carried out by the Judicial Medical Officer Balachandran Sridharan of Vavunia.

“Two bodies were covered in white bags and other three were in black polythene bags”, said the parliamentarian. More

9 News – MIA gets Twitter revenge on journalist

Singer MIA has taken her revenge on a journalist by publishing the reporter’s phone number on Twitter.

MIA had taken offence to an article written by New York Times journalist Lynn Hirschberg about the singer’s links to Sri Lanka, her visa problems in the US and her family, the music website NME.com reports.

Huffington Post – M.I.A. Freaks Out At ‘New York Times,’ Tweets Reporter’s Phone Number

MIA is upset about a New York Times Magazine cover story about her, so she tweeted the phone number of the piece’s writer, Lynn Hirschberg.

“917.834.3158 CALL ME IF YOU WANNA TALK TO ME ABOUT THE N Y T TRUTH ISSUE, ill b taking calls all day bitches ” she wrote.

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 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

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

INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP – NEW REPORT

War Crimes in Sri Lanka

Brussels, 17 May 2010: Newly revealed evidence of war crimes in Sri Lanka last year makes an international inquiry essential.

War Crimes in Sri Lanka ,* the latest report from the International Crisis Group, exposes repeated violations of international law by both the Sri Lankan security forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the last five months of their 30-year civil war. That evidence suggests that the period of January to May 2009 saw tens of thousands of Tamil civilian men, women, children and the elderly killed, countless more wounded, and hundreds of thousands deprived of adequate food and medical care, resulting in more deaths.

Released on the eve of the first anniversary of the end of the fighting, the report calls for an international inquiry into alleged crimes. The government has conclusively demonstrated its unwillingness to undertake genuine investigations of security force abuses and continues to deny any responsibility for civilian casualties. A true accounting is needed to address the grievances that drive conflict in Sri Lanka, so the international community must take the lead.

“The scale of civilian deaths and suffering demands a response”, says Crisis Group President Louise Arbour. “Future generations will demand to know what happened, and future peace in Sri Lanka requires some measure of justice.”

Both sides in Sri Lanka’s civil war violated international humanitarian law throughout the decades-long conflict. However the violations became particularly frequent and deadly in the months leading to the government’s declaration of victory over the LTTE in May 2009. Evidence gathered by Crisis Group provides reasonable grounds to believe that government security forces repeatedly and intentionally violated the law by attacking civilians, hospitals and humanitarian operations. The government declined to respond to Crisis Group’s request for comment on these allegations. Evidence also shows that the LTTE violated the law by killing, wounding or otherwise endangering civilians, including by shooting them and preventing them from leaving the conf lict zone even when injured and dying.  More

Ministry of Defence Sri Lanka - ‘Traitors should be given Capital punishment’

Defence Secretary Rajapaksa says the LTTE rump is exploring every avenue to avenge Prabhakaran’s killing on the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon last May.

Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa says anyone seeking to undermine Sri Lanka’s sovereignty should be treated as a traitor regardless of his or her position.

It will be a grave blunder on the government’s part to pave the way for the so-called international community to interfere in Sri Lanka, he says.

The Defence Ministry says that any Sri Lankan promoting an agenda which is detrimental to the country is nothing but a traitor who should be ready to face the consequences.

Defence Secretary Rajapaksa told The Island in a brief interview that traitors deserved capital punishment and no one should shed crocodile tears over them.

He emphasized that the armed forces had paid a heavy price to bring the LTTE to its knees last May and nothing could be as loathsome as producing officers, who had spearheaded the offensive before an international tribunal. More

National Post - Rebel Bagman - Tamil Tigers fundraiser first person in Canada to be found guilty of financing terrorism

Stewart Bell

At 9:22 p.m. on March 14, 2008, members of the RCMP’s counter-terrorism squad in British Columbia pulled over a gray Mazda 3 and arrested the driver for financing terrorism.

It was a first for Canada.

For more than a decade, Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers rebels had fundraised in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver to finance their liberation struggle, but this was the first time anyone had been criminally charged over it.

That case ended yesterday in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver when Prapaharan Thambithurai, a 46-year-old Sri Lankan-born Canadian from Maple, Ont., was sentenced to six months to be served at an Ontario prison.

Justice Robert Powers said refugees from war-torn countries should be able to resettle in Canada free from the pressures of the homeland. But Thambithurai’s wife, Uthaya, insisted her husband had “nothing to do with any terrorist activities.”

While Thambithurai’s guilty plea means there will be no trial, court documents and interviews show the case revolved around a single $600 donation. But such donations all added up: federal officials estimate that Tamil rebel bagmen raised $10-to $12-million a year in Canada in much the same way.

A home satellite installer from the suburban belt north of Toronto, Thambithurai flew to Vancouver on Air Canada on March 11, 2008, documents show. He rented a compact car from Avis and spent the night at the Quality Inn Airport Hotel.

It was a homecoming of sorts. Thambithurai had lived in Vancouver after fleeing Sri Lanka, where his brother was shot dead by the army, his wife said. He studied accounting at the University of British Columbia and became president of the Eelam Tamil Association of B.C. More