Tamil Justice

The UK Guardian Comment – Tamils aren’t voting for change

Suren Surendiran

The Tamil National Alliance‘s current manifesto prefers a federal structure in Sri Lanka to a separate state. It claims shared sovereignty, and that the north and east provinces are the historical habitations of Tamil-speaking people. It further states that the Tamil people are a distinct nationality and are entitled to the right of self-determination. Power-sharing arrangements must be established in a unit of merged Northern and Eastern provinces based on a federal structure, in a manner also acceptable to the Tamil-speaking Muslim people. Devolution of power should be in the areas of land, law and order, socioeconomic development including health and education, resources and fiscal powers. More

AlJazeera – Fractious Sri Lanka seeks unity

Sri Lanka’s president has called on the country’s ethnic Tamils to help ease tensions, as the country marks its first independence day since the end of a 25-year civil war.

Mahinda Rajapaksa, speaking at a ceremony in the central city of Kandy on Thursday, indicated there would be no self-determination for Tamils, but called on them to work with the government.

“Let’s solve our problems ourselves through discussions,” he said in the Tamil language.

But Suren Surendiran, a senior member of the British Tamils Forum in London, dismissed Rajapaksa’s claim to want to resolve ethnic tensions.

“He’s been saying that forever,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Mr Rajapaksa has proven to be a very opressive and discriminating president. The Tamils are not celebrating today as an independece day. Rajapkasa was not voted in in the north and east, where the Tamils are – it’s their land.” More

The Guardian – Stop Sri Lanka’s crimes

The US is the latest country to join the ever-growing list of nations that condemn Sri Lanka for its violations of international humanitarian law, crimes against humanity and related harms in its fight against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

The government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) is complicit in almost all the acts listed in the Rome statute of the international criminal court in its definition of crimes against humanity, according to evidence in a report published by the US state department for Congress on 22 October.

The report highlights deaths due to starvation as a result of the government’s restriction of supplies. It also indicates that the supply of medicines to the injured, disabled and sick was restricted. None were spared.

Satellite images show hospitals being targeted, and there are images which indicate heavy weapon usage, aerial bombing and cluster bombs. Eyewitness accounts outline the targeting of civilian areas and surrendering unarmed combatants being shot in cold blood. Video evidence shows alleged military executions of young naked men.

Who would argue against a damning report? Only Sri Lanka. More

Amnesty International – Sri Lankan displaced trapped between the military and the impending monsoon

A quarter of a million Sri Lankans now being held in de facto detention camps are facing a humanitarian disaster as monsoon rains threaten to flood camps, said Amnesty International on Thursday.

Months after the government of Sri Lanka set up camps in Vavuniya District in the north-east of the country following the end of the conflict there, the authorities are still failing to deliver basic services.

Camps remain overcrowded and lack basic sanitation facilities and heavy rains in September saw rivers of water cascading through tents with camp residents wading through overflowing sewage.

“People living in these camps are desperate to leave. The government must ensure that the displaced are treated with dignity. They have a right to protection and must be consulted on whether they wish to return to their homes or resettle,” said Yolanda Foster, Amnesty International’s Sri Lanka expert, who is in contact with relatives of people inside the camp

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Shirking a moral duty to Sri Lanka

The EU acknowledges that Sri Lanka does not comply with human rights obligations, yet still grants it trade preferences

In 2005, when the EU’s generous tariff preferences arrangement, the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP+), was under review, Romano Prodi challenged why, of the countries in the region, Sri Lanka should be granted GSP+ status instead of, say, India or Pakistan. The then Sri Lankan prime minister argued that GSP+ benefits would assist in post-tsunami reconstruction. Sri Lanka’s case prevailed on the strength of the then peace process and the existence of an internationally sponsored ceasefire agreement of 2002, which position found resonance with the EU but which the government of Sri Lanka unilaterally abrogated in January 2008.

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Sri Lanka seeks extra 20pct for ’09 defence budget

Sri Lanka’s government on Thursday sought an additional 39.6 billion rupees ($345 million) to fund its military, a 20 percent increase from the original defence budget despite the end of a 25-year war against Tamil Tigers in May.

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ThaiIndia News : Protest against Sri Lankan diplomat over “irresponsible” comment

Hundreds of Tamils and pro- Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) supporters staged a demonstration in Chennai on Thursday, demanding the Indian government to initiate steps to immediately send back Sri Lankan Deputy High Commissioner Vadivel Krishnamoorthy.

Krishnamoorthy was recently involved in a controversy over his comment that the camps of displaced Tamils in Lanka were not zoos to be visited by outside people.

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Guardian Comment – Sri Lanka’s dangerous silence

The Paris-based non-governmental organisation Action Contre la Faim (ACF) last week accused the Sri Lankan government’s presidential commission of inquiry of failing to identify the people responsible for the killing of 17 aid workers in August 2006, calling it one of the “most serious crimes ever committed against an NGO” and reiterating its calls to the European Union for an “internationalised inquiry into this massacre”.

The government of Sri Lanka continues its farce on the world media stage, parading the five detained Tamil doctors who retracted statements they made on the number of civilian causalities during the final stages of the conflict and prompting calls by Amnesty International for an “independent inquiry” into war crimes. Despite the renunciation by the doctors, who remain in custody and apparently under duress, the UN, aid workers and an investigation by the Times have corroborated the true extent of civilian casualties during the final onslaught.

The Hindu – Veteran Sri Lankan diplomat sacked

Veteran Sri Lankan diplomat Dayan Jayatilleka has been sacked triggering speculation that his protest against Israeli incursion into Gaza could have prompted the move.

Jayatilleka, Sri Lanka’s permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, said he hadn’t the “foggiest notion” why he was terminated as it was not contained in his letter of dismissal.

Official sources confirmed that Mr. Jayatilleka has been told to “relinquish his duties”.

The diplomat is a strong advocate of devolution of powers to provinces, including those with majority Tamil population, and favours strong ties with India.

“The news item which quoted a Foreign Ministry source, though not explicitly giving a reason has made reference to a statement made by the irrepressible Ambassador (Jayatilleka) when he gave vent to his feelings over the cruel bombing of Gaza,” the Island Newspaper said in an article on Monday.

NY Times Opinion – War Without End

The guns have fallen silent in Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war, but the deep wounds of ethnic animosity have not even begun to heal. An estimated 300,000 Tamil civilians remain essentially prisoners in internment camps run by a Sinhalese-dominated government.

To begin easing the deep mistrust between the communities, donor countries will have to pressure the government to be as serious about securing a just peace as it was earlier this year about winning the war.

The final months of combat in the decades-long war between the Sri Lankan Army and the rebel Tamil Tigers were brutal. As government forces tightened a noose around insurgent positions, hundreds of thousands of civilians were caught in the middle.

AFP – ICRC cuts back S.Lanka operations after govt order

The Red Cross on Monday announced the closure of four offices in Sri Lanka following a government order to foreign aid agencies to scale down operations.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said its four offices in the embattled eastern province were closed at the weekend.

“The ICRC reaffirms its commitment to meet the humanitarian needs of those directly or indirectly affected by the recent conflict,” the Geneva-based organisation said in its statement.

It said offices in the Akkaraipattu, Batticaloa, Muttur and Trincomalee areas in the eastern province were shut. The statement did not mention ICRC operations in the north where there are some 300,000 war-displaced civilians.

Guardian Comment – Humanity failed in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is a country where abductions, disappearances, killings and general human rights violations happen with impunity. Law and order is applied selectively. Racists are promoted to higher ranks and government allegedly colludes with armed paramilitary in abductions and disappearances. In recent times, Sri Lanka has taken a step further in breaching international law, Geneva conventions and UN charters that it is signed up to. In the name of “war on terror”, Sri Lanka conducted mass murder in broad daylight.

What are we going to tell our own kids when they ask us what we did to save those children? We know from the UN secretary general that more than 50,000 children are living under “appalling conditions” in barbed-wire open prisons. We also know that in the weeks preceding the end of the war at the end of last month, over 20,000 innocent lives were lost and possibly over a third of that were children. Many of them died due to starvation and lack of medical care as the government of Sri Lanka, refused the calls of institutions like the Red Cross and the UN to send sufficient food and medicines.

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The Great Debate – Genocide in Sri Lanka

- Suren Surendiran is the spokesman for the British Tamils Forum. The opinions expressed are his own. -

The news that over 20,000 innocent civilians were killed by the military onslaught of the Sri Lankan army has shocked the world, but not world leaders like President Obama, Prime Minister Brown, President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel. For, they knew exactly what was going to happen and what is happening now.

How right Albert Einstein was when he said, “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of those who are evil but because of those who don’t do anything about it”.

“When genocide is happening,” said candidate Obama, so eloquently during the second presidential debate, “when ethnic cleansing is happening somewhere around the world and we stand idly by, that diminishes us.”

The United Nations has yet again proved under the current leadership, that it is an ineffective organisation in conflict resolution and prevention of genocide.

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Guardian UK : The UN has failed the Tamils

After reports of 20,000 massacred by the Sri Lankan military, the EU and others must step in where the UN fears to tread

BBC : Calls mount for Sri Lanka probe

British human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson said it would take time for the true story to emerge. Foreign journalists and humanitarian groups were barred from the conflict zone and although the Red Cross entered, it does not give evidence in international courts, he said.

“In the fullness of time, of course, you do have witnesses, you do have thousands of people who were on that dreadful strip of beach [designated as a safe zone by the government].”

He said as well as priests and doctors talking about what happened, there were also graves.

“This is the way, unfortunately, war crimes are now dealt with, through forensic investigators finding out the story by investigating mass graves.

“And there do seem, from aerial photographs, to be some.”

The Times – Time for Witness

BBC - Sri Lanka Tamils ‘facing misery’