Telegraph UK – Should Tamils vote for the General who crushed them?

by Dean Nelson

Who should Sri Lanka’s blighted Tamils vote for in this month’s presidential election – the politician who ordered a final offensive against their last stronghold or the general who called the shots?

There are other candidates, but only two stand a chance of winning – incumbent president Mahinda Rajapaksa and his former Army chief General Sarath Fonseka.

Both men claim credit for the final defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and bringing an end to Sri Lanka’s 26 year civil war. And now both men are fighting each other for the votes of the same Tamils they boast of defeating.

Neither see a contradiction. The Tamil Tigers were tyrants who sent children to their deaths and oppressed the people they claimed to represent, the military victory has now liberated them to live as Sri Lankans. More

Spero News - India: Sri Lanka: Refugees: the blood of more than 30,000 Tamils taint Sri Lanka’s elections

A Tamil refugee reaches this conclusion after years in exile. Most people do not expect much change to the Tamil problem. Many hope nevertheless to see Rajapaska lose; they see him as the architect of their genocide.

“Presidential elections are tainted by the blood of 30,000 Tamils,” a Tamil refugee told AsiaNews. As Sri Lanka’s election campaign gets into high gear, Tamil refugees in neighbouring India have little hope that it will bring any major change.

Living in India since 1996, the refugee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the Tamil National Alliance backs opposition candidate and former Sri Lankan army commander General Sarath Fonseka.

He explained, “Whilst Fonseka has not made any concrete proposals to solve the Tamil question, he is still better than Rajapaska, the architect of the genocide of the Tamil minority with massacres, mass internment, and serious human rights abuses.” More

Reuters (21/12) – Sri Lanka says UN wants explanation on Tiger deaths

by Ranga Srilal

The United Nations wants the Sri Lankan government to explain allegations about the deaths of senior Tamil Tiger rebels in the closing stages of the country’s civil war, the president’s office said on Monday.

Earlier this month a weekend newspaper reported retired General Sarath Fonseka, who is challenging President Mahinda Rajapaksa in a January election, had said government soldiers were ordered to shoot surrendering Tamil Tiger rebels.

Fonseka subsequently said the paper had misquoted him and he denied any such shootings took place.

The statement from President Rajapaksa’s office said the UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-judicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions “has asked the government to provide explanations with regard to the circumstances of the death of three senior LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) cadres and their families at the last stages of military operations to defeat the LTTE in May this year.” More

BBC News (21/12) – UN presses Sri Lanka over Tamil Tiger killings

The Sri Lankan government says the UN has asked it to explain allegations that Tamil Tiger rebel leaders were executed as they tried to surrender.

The president’s office said it was studying the request and would take any action necessary.

The claims – rejected by the government – were first made in a Sri Lankan newspaper and attributed to Sri Lankan ex-military chief Gen Sarath Fonseka. More

ABC News (21/12) – Surrendering Tamil Tigers ‘executed by soldiers’

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has received a letter from the United Nations seeking an explanation for the deaths of several high ranking Tamil Tigers.

The rebels were killed in the final stages of Sri Lanka’s civil war in May.

Earlier this month former army chief and now presidential candidate General Sarath Fonseka repeated allegations the Tamil Tiger commanders were executed as they tried to surrender. More

The Independent  – Sri Lanka to release 136,000 war-displaced Tamils

Sri Lanka will release 136,000 ethnic-minority Tamil war refugees on 1 December, allowing the civilians to leave squalid and overcrowded government camps after a half-year detainment, a top official said today.

Some 300,000 war-displaced were forced into camps after fleeing the final months of the government’s decades-long war with the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels, which ended in May.

The ethnic minority Tamils are held against their will. More than half were released in recent months amid pressure from rights groups and foreign governments. Authorities say nearly 136,000 people remain detained in the camps, which are guarded by soldiers and strung with barbed wire. More

The Australian – Ban Tamil Tigers, Sri Lanka urges

The Age – NZ rejects Rudd Government plea on refugees

NEW Zealand has rejected an approach from the Rudd Government to resettle some of the 78 asylum seekers refusing to leave an Australian customs boat moored off Indonesia.

Indonesia has also delivered another rebuff to Australia over the stand-off, with a top military spokesman calling the Oceanic Viking an ”uninvited guest” and saying its presence undermined Indonesian sovereignty.

New Zealand’s refusal to help, confirmed yesterday by its Immigration Minister, Jonathan Coleman, has added to the pressure on the Government as it tries to resolve the stand-off over the Oceanic Viking, now in its fourth week. More

ABC -Smith dismisses Oceanic Viking deadline

Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith says he expects the Oceanic Viking and the 78 asylum seekers on board to retain security clearance to remain in Indonesian waters beyond this week.

The Sri Lankan asylum seekers have been on the Australian Customs ship for almost four weeks but are refusing to leave.

The security clearance for the ship to stay in Indonesian waters has been extended before and expires again on Friday.

Mr Smith has told the 7.30 Report that he does not anticipate any problems in it being renewed if necessary.

“If the matter is not resolved by Friday, we fully expect that the diplomatic clearance for the Oceanic Viking will again be extended,” Mr Smith said. More

The Australian – Philippines solution to Sri Lankan asylum-seeker crisis

The Australian – Brother speaks up for ‘Alex’

THE Toronto-based older brother of Sri Lankan asylum-seeker Sanjeev “Alex” Kuhendrarajah has dismissed as “bogus” claims by the government in Colombo that both men are involved in people-smuggling.

The 29-year-old businessman, who spoke to The Australian on the condition his name not be revealed, said he had investigated the Sri Lankan claims, made last week, that he was being pursued by Canadian authorities.

“I’ve looked into it and nobody here has any kind of warrant out on me, so that is bogus right there,” he said.

Sanjeev Kuhendrarajah remains with almost 250 Tamil asylum-seekers on a wooden cargo boat in the western Java port of Merak, demanding to be processed by the UN and taken to a resettlement country.

His brother confirmed many details of Mr Kuhendrarajah’s story, revealed in The Australian on Monday, including his troubled youth in Canada when he was a ward of the state, and membership of a Toronto Tamil criminal gang leading to his conviction on firearms charges and eventual deportation from the country in 2003. More

International Crisis Group - Testimony by Andrew Stroehlein, International Crisis Group’s Communications Director, to the European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights, 1 October 2009.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for offering Crisis Group the opportunity to present our assessment of the situation in Sri Lanka today.

Since the end of the war and the defeat of the terrorist Tamil Tigers, the government of Sri Lanka has been imprisoning without charge over a quarter of a million ethnic Tamils displaced by the conflict. The state has locked them in internment camps in the north of the country. The camps are surrounded by barbed wire, and as an incident just this past weekend in Vavuniya demonstrates, the Sri Lankan army will shoot at anyone who tries to escape.

Such restrictions on freedom in the absence of due process are a violation of both national and international law.

Conditions in the camps are poor and deteriorating. They are overcrowded, with medical facilities, access to clean water and sanitation all woefully inadequate. These conditions are expected to worsen dramatically with the onset of monsoon season. The military is preventing humanitarian organisations, including the UN and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), from undertaking effective monitoring and protection in the camps.

The government has made numerous promises to release those held in the main camps, but these are little more than attempts to deliberately mislead the international community. Very little has come of any of Colombo’s pledges. The worst kind of duplicity was seen just a few weeks ago, when the government announced it had released 10,000 displaced persons. In fact, we know at least 3,300 people had been moved from an internment camp to another detention facility. (UNHCR press release, 29 September 2009)

Here are the numbers as we understand them today (as of 15 September, UNHCR with government figures). Of the estimated 289,000 internally displaced Tamils at the end of the war, some 10,000 are held in detention centres on suspicion of having links to the Tamil Tigers, about 5,000 have managed to buy their way out of the camps by paying off the right people, and only 6,000 have been resettled. Those in the main camps in the north number about 264,000.

The ICRC has not been able to visit the main camps in the north since July, and they have never been able to visit those in detention facilities who are accused of working with or for the Tigers.

Click here to read full testimony

The Times of India : Malaysian Indian sues officials over LTTE link charge

KUALA LUMPUR: Firmly denying any links with Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a Malaysian Indian legislator on Friday sued senior government officials for defamation.

M. Manoharan, a legislator from Kota Alam Shah in Selangor state and a former legal advisor of the now-banned Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) said neither he nor any of the other Hindraf leaders had links with the Tamil Tigers.

He filed an RM 100 million ($28.67 million) defamation suit against Inspector General of Police Musa Hasan, Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail and media organisations.

The two senior officials had told the court of the LTTE links to justify the detention of Manoharan and four others under the stringent Internal Security Act (ISA) in December 2007.

A fortnight before their arrest, the five had led a protest rally in Kuala Lumpur to protest discrimination against Tamil Hindus who form a bulk of the nearly two million ethnic Indian population.

The rally attracted 10,000 people. It was declared illegal and forcibly dispersed.

Detained for two years, Manoharan and his colleagues were released on bail in April this year by Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak who called it “a conciliatory gesture”.

Manoharan had got elected to the Selangor assembly while in detention, but was not allowed to perform his duties as a legislator.

“Ours is a people’s struggle, we are not terrorists and neither are the movement’s main members P. Uthayakumar, P. Waythamoorthy, S. Ganabathi Rao and K. Vasathakumar,” he said.

Manoharan added that his detention over allegations that he was linked to the Tamil Tigers was absurd.

“Never have I visited Sri Lanka and our movement has no links with the LTTE. It is a figment of the government’s imagination,” he said.

Manoharan said he now needs to catch up with his family, look for a house in Klang and resume his legal practice, The Star reported.

Sri Lanka’s Tamil rebels were defeated in May in a major military campaign that left the LTTE leadership dead.

BBC : Two key Tamil Tigers given bail

A court in Sri Lanka has granted bail to two former Tamil Tiger civilian officials who have been in government custody for more than four months.

AFP : Sri Lankan court frees Tiger officials on bail

BBC – US warns of Sri Lankan violence

A senior US diplomat has warned that the Sri Lankan government’s failure to share power with the minority Tamils could lead to renewed violence.

BBC – Upset in Sri Lanka post-war polls

Initial results from the first post-war elections in northern Sri Lanka show the governing party has taken Jaffna, the region’s biggest city.

But it suffered a surprise defeat in Vavuniya, the other town where polling took place, where a group supportive of the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels won.

Ballots are still being counted in the southern province of Uva.

Turnout was low. Correspondents say people felt the vote took place too early, with thousands still displaced.

The local elections came a day after the defence ministry said it had arrested the new head of the Tamil Tigers, Selvarasa Pathmanathan.

Mr Pathmanathan was detained abroad and was being questioned in Sri Lanka, it added. The rebels have confirmed his arrest.

According to preliminary results, President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s governing United People’s Freedom Alliance, won control of Jaffna city council in Saturday’s election, securing 13 of the 23 seats available.

The Tamil National Alliance, a fractious but broadly pro-LTTE parliamentary grouping, came second with eight seats.

Turnout was only 20%. Monitors said one problem had been that many people did not receive voting cards, for reasons that are unclear. Refugees were also required to apply to vote.

But in Vavuniya, where turnout was 52%, the UPFA was pushed into third place, winning only two seats. The TNA came first with five of the 11 seats on the council, followed by a moderate Tamil grouping.

The BBC’s Charles Haviland in Colombo says the result in Vavuniya will be seen as an upset.

For one thing, our correspondent says, the TNA had openly said it did not feel this was the right time for elections, with more than a quarter of a million Tamils still detained in nearby government camps and much of the north depopulated.

And it was generally believed that the government would do well, having a broad coalition led in the north by a powerful and stridently anti-Tiger Tamil party, and having promised a “northern spring” of major development projects that would gradually return the region to normality, our correspondent adds.

As a result of its victory in the war, the government is expected to have done well in the Sinhalese-dominated southern province of Uva.

Voting passed off largely peacefully, although monitors reported scuffles, including one involving a government minister at a camp housing refugees from Jaffna who had been voting remotely.

However, our correspondent says there has not been much chance to scrutinise the conduct of the elections or the campaigns.

Just as it did from the war zone, the government once again kept independent journalists out of the north, and even election monitors said information was hard to come by, he adds.