Tamil Justice

We have been trying to do some research into the state of tamil refugees in Thailand and Malaysia….will update as we go along.

A facebook entry by Eashvara Liangam (Co-ordinator – Sri Lanka Tamil Refugees Rehabilitation Program) says

According to the UN Refugees Agency (UNHCR) in K.Lumpur there are about 5,000 Sri Lanka Tamils registered as refugees in Malaysia.

However these refugees have no legal status to work here. Their sufferings here are far worse than in Sri Lanka. They have no food, no medical care and no basic education for the children. They are also constantly harassed by the police, Immigration and the RELA and put into prison and forcibly deported inspite of having the UNHCR Refugee Identification Card.

2009

Tamilnet (11/09) – Eezham Tamil refugees in Thailand in dire straits – TNA parliamentarian

Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian Chandraneru Chandrakanthan who had spent three days in Thailand meeting Eezham Tamils who had sought refugee with Thailand UNCHR authorities said that nearly 4000 of them are facing insurmountable difficulties. The MP has requested the UN and the UNCHR to do the needful to these refugees. Tamils living in various parts of the world should pay attention to the sufferings of these refugees in Thailand remembering that there are Eezham Tamil refugees even out of Sri Lanka who need immediate attention and support, Chandrakanthan said.

Thaiindian (11/09) – Tamil refugees facing harassment in Malaysia

After fleeing the shores of their war-torn country, Sri Lankan Tamil refugees here in Malaysia are facing harassment at the hands of the police and RELA (paramilitary) officers.

The Star Online quoted Tamil refugees, as saying that Myanmar refugees are treated differently from their Sri Lankans counterparts.

They are also finding it hard to get jobs in Malaysia.

Tamil Forum Malaysia, a non-governmental organisation, is currently pushing for temporary work permits for the adults and building a school for the children.

There are about 4,000 Sri Lankan refugees in Malaysia as a result of the island state’s 20-year civil war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Legal News (10/09) – Sri Lankan refugees in Malaysian camp go on hunger strike

At least six Sri Lankan refugees at a Malaysian detention camp have been on a hunger strike for more than seven days, demanding that they be allowed to meet officials from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), a news report said Friday.

Myanmar Refugees Blog – Tamils’ transit to Australia, ‘land of freedom’

2008

World United Bloggers (04/08) –  Plight of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees languishing in Immigration Bureau Jails in Thailand

Hundreds of Tamils fled the worsening situation in Sri Lanka soon after the peace accord was signed in 2002. Among them a few hundreds sought refuge in Thailand. Most of those refugees could now be found in the Immigration Bureau jail of Thailand.

For the past two years more than a hundred Tamils have been imprisoned in the Immigration Bureau jail of Thailand. Around 21 children and more than 20 women are among the hundreds of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees imprisoned.

These Tamil refugees have been allotted the worst cells in the jail. It has been months since any of them had seen the sunlight or breathed fresh air. They are struggling to find space even to sleep among the people from all over the world, who have been imprisoned here on one pretext or another. Children’s education and health are totally neglected. The food provided is devoid of nutrients. Most of the people imprisoned are sick and they are affected both psychologically and physically. Some medicines are given once in a while through the prison bars, without even examining the patient.

ABC – 45 asylum seekers intercepted

Authorities have rescued 45 Tamil asylum seekers from a boat drifting near Christmas Island.

SMH – Rocking the asylum boats

SMH – Asylum seekers rescued off Christmas Is

Herald Sun – Asylum seeker boat calls for help off Christmas Island

ABC – Asylum seekers rescued off WA

WA Today – Asylum-seekers adrift off WA coast with no supplies

Herald Sun (30/01) – Christmas Island hunger strike ends

Big Pond News (30/01) – Detention centre continues to grow

Herald Sun (29/01) – Delays spark asylum hunger strike

ABC Online (29/01) – Christmas Is detainees ‘have nothing to complain about’

News.com.au (29/01) – Hunger strikers ‘have no reason to complain’

News.com.au (28/01) – Christmas Island ‘more like motel than detention centre’

ABC Online (28/01) – Detainees in Christmas Island protest

ABC Online (28/01) – Opposition slams Christmas Island ‘visa factory’

Times of India – Lanka prez polls: Mahinda Rajapakse takes big lead in early count

Business Week – Rajapaksa Leads Sri Lanka Vote as Fonseka Candidacy Challenged

Xinhua – Rajapaksa takes initial lead in Sri Lanka’s presidential poll

Reuters – Sri Lanka presidential challenger says fears arrest

SMH – Fears military will intervene in Sri Lanka election

Times Online – Sri Lanka on brink of fresh violence after controversial election

Times Online – Abuse of power makes travesty of democracy

The Hindu - Over 70 per cent polling in Sri Lanka presidential poll

Bloomberg – Sri Lanka Election Officials Defend Fonseka’s Presidency Bid

Times of India – Lankans cast ballots but Fonseka can’t

CNN – Sri Lanka politicians vow to block vote favorite

** for those asking if people in camps can vote – this article mentions they can : 

Independent – Defeated Tamils a force again

AlJazeera – Sri Lanka refugees living in limbo

As Sri Lanka prepares for its first presidential election since the end of the civil war, around 100,000 ethnic Tamils are still being held in refugee camps in the north of the country.

The incumbent president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, is expected to face a strong challenge from the retired army general, Sarath Fonseka.

One of the big election issues has been the treatment of the minority Tamils, after thousands died in the final stages of the war.

Wayne Hay was granted a rare opportunity to travel to the former battleground, to see how the Tamils are coping in peace time.

Reuters India – Preview – After Sri Lanka’s war, victors vie for presidency

by C. Bryson Hull

Sri Lanka’s first post-war presidential election due on Tuesday has turned into a violent contest between two former allies who led the nation to victory over the Tamil Tigers but who are now bitter political foes.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa is facing an unexpectedly strong challenge from General Sarath Fonseka, who as army commander led a relentless campaign to crush the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’s (LTTE) three-decade separatist insurgency.

On Tuesday, polls open for an election in which nearly 14.1 million people are registered to vote. More than 68,000 police will be deployed to protect polling stations and there are fears voting day could be bloody.

There is little difference between the Rajapaksa and Fonseka campaign platforms, both of which are heavy on populist subsidies, pledges of pay raises to Sri Lanka’s bloated public sector and promises of rural development. More

AFP - Tense peace reigns as Sri Lanka heads to polls

by Amal Jayasinghe

War-scarred Sri Lanka holds a peace-time presidential election this week after a bitter and highly personal campaign between the architects of the crushing of an almost four-decade-long insurgency.

President Mahinda Rajapakse will face his former army chief Sarath Fonseka on Tuesday in an intriguing contest between two men who were victorious allies on the battlefield last year but are now sworn enemies at the ballot box.

There are no reliable opinion polls in the country and political observers say the election is too close to call. Both camps believe they can claim a majority in the voting by the 14.08-million-strong electorate.

Rajapakse and Fonseka wiped out the Tamil Tiger rebels in May last year, ending their 37-year violent struggle for a Tamil homeland that left between 80,000 and 100,000 people dead, according to UN estimates. More

ABC News – Campaigning ends ahead of Sri Lanka election

By South Asia correspondent Sally Sara and wires

Opposition activists say the Sri Lankan government is planning to use vote rigging and violence to win the presidential election, as campaigning officially ends.

The two main candidates in the poll, President Mahinda Rajapakse and former army chief General Sarath Fonseca have held their final campaign rallies ahead of Tuesday’s vote.

Both are closely associated with the defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels.

Looking tired after a heavy campaign schedule, Mr Rajapakse wowed the large but somewhat regimented crowd of supporters, who cheered politely but not wildly.

As always, he spoke of last year’s war victory against the Tamil Tigers, and the need to fight corruption.

With music and fireworks, the president’s team say they’re already celebrating certain victory.

But General Fonseca says the ruling party is planning to use violence and vote rigging to disrupt the poll. More

Hindustan Times – Sri Lanka’s war allies turn enemies

by Amal Jayasinghe, Agence France-Presse

Sri Lanka’s election this week features two men who emerged victorious on the battlefield of a civil war, but have since become bitter political enemies.

President Mahinda Rajapakse, a veteran streetfighter politician who entered parliament aged 24, is taking on his former army chief Sarath Fonseka, a political novice who stepped down last year after being sidelined.

Rajapakse handpicked Fonseka for the top military role soon after he won his first term in 2005 and lauded him as the “best army commander in the world” last year in the afterglow of their victory over Tamil Tiger rebels.

But their friendship soured over who should take the most credit for winning the conflict amid suspicion that Fonseka was becoming too powerful and might even stage a coup. More

Al Jazzera English – Sri Lanka Candidates trade barbs

With Sri Lankans set to elect a new president on Tuesday, the country’s political temperature is rising.

It is for the first time in decades that the country is holding a vote free from the spectre of a long civil war, which ended last year with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist group fighting for an independent state for minority Tamils.

But the election campaign has been vicious and often violent, with several activitists drawn from rival political camps being killed. Read more and watch news report

Arab News – Editorial: Sri Lanka elections

On Tuesday Sri Lankans will elect a president. Their choice is between the incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa who called the elections two years early in the wake of last year’s defeat of the Tamil Tigers and retired army chief Sarath Fonseka, the general who was instrumental in bringing about the rout of the rebels.

This is without doubt a highly important election. The man who wins will face the immense challenge of rebuilding the peace after quarter of a century of merciless ethnic conflict that cost at least 70,000 lives. On the face of it, the incumbent looks best placed to deliver. Rajapaksa is a seasoned politician with a relatively united political party United People’s Freedom Alliance behind him. Fonseka, by contrast, almost makes a merit of the fact that he is not a politician. The implication is that he is not tainted by allegations of corruption, specifically those that have swirled around the incumbent and his immediate family. More

World Socialist Web Site (23/01) - Sri Lankan union endorses SEP presidential candidate

The Executive Committee of the Central Bank Employees Union (CBEU) passed a resolution, January 15, to endorse the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) candidate Wije Dias in Sri Lanka’s January 26 presidential election.

The resolution by one of the country’s leading trade unions supporting the election campaign and political perspective of the SEP provides a guide for the rest of the working class in the island: the working class must organize under the leadership of the SEP to fight back against the attack that will be launched on its social conditions and democratic rights whichever capitalist candidate, either the incumbent Mahinda Rajapakse or the former army commander Sarath Fonseka, wins the election.

For several decades, the CBEU membership has continuously elected members of the SEP and its forerunner, the Revolutionary Communist League, to leading positions. Under their leadership the CBEU has opposed the anti-Tamil war—even after the LTTE mounted a criminal attack on the CBEU headquarters in 1996 that killed scores of workers—and stood for the unity of all working people, Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim, in the struggle for a socialist alternative to the capitalist rule. More

The Washington Post (23/01) – Sri Lankan ruling party plans violence: opposition

by Fisnik Abrashi, Associated Press

The accusation came on the last day of bitter campaigning between the two main architects of last year’s victory over the Tamil Tiger rebels – the incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa and former army chief Sarath Fonseka – who are vying for the presidency at Tuesday’s vote.

Election-related violence has marred the campaign for weeks. Five people have been killed and 78 wounded since December, according to a local group tracking the violence. More

The Sunday Times (24/01) – FOCUS on Rights

By Kishali Pinto Jayawardene

As Sri Lanka goes to the polls on Tuesday in what is one of the most decisive elections post-independence, there is one certainty for which all of us need to be thankful for regardless of whoever may be the victor. This certainty is that an almost unchallengeable juggernaut Rajapaksa Presidency has been shaken to its very marrow by the range and forcefulness of the challenges mounted against it. I am not talking here only of political challenges but also of reenergized public opinion which is now reflecting issues and questions concerning our political systems and governance processes which would have seemed quite unthinkable just a few months back.

Despite the vicious mud slinging and the upsurge in electoral violence, this is perhaps a most positive feature regarding the upcoming elections. And notwithstanding persisting cynicism regarding the virtually overnight transformation of a hardline army commander to a liberal unifier of a once fractured opposition as its common candidate, I am, (as a citizen of this country who will insist on casting my vote Tuesday hence), insensibly grateful for this interjection of a strong counter into a hitherto cowed and subjugated polity.

Electoral paradoxes and government hypocrisy

There is, after all, little quarrel with the proposition that in the absence of a strong counter, this month’s election would have been a given for the incumbent President. We would see continued disregard of constitutional safeguards ensuring principled governance and further extreme repression of the media. Lofty Presidential pronouncements that there are no more minorities or a majority in Sri Lanka would be belied by (to mention one existing example) the sentencing of an ethnic Tamil to twenty years imprisonment primarily for the sin of writing and publishing commentaries critical of government policy in the war theatre. It took a strongly contested election to release JS Tissainayagam in bail and to ‘resettle” thousands of internally displaced persons living in the mud on welfare camps. What better message these acts may have conveyed if they had been engaged in voluntarily by the government without being virtually bulldozed into so doing by opposition demands? More

Times Online (22/01) - Sri Lanka locked in dirtiest election for years as poll violence rises

by Ralph Michael

It was just before dawn yesterday when the bomb exploded in front of Tiran Alles’s villa in Colombo, signalling a new low in one of the dirtiest elections in Sri Lanka’s history.

By the time he rushed from his bedroom at the back of the house, the entire façade was in flames, as was his Toyota saloon in the forecourt. “Shocking,” Mr Alles, 49, told The Times as police examined the wreckage. “There’ll be more violence like this before polling day.”

Until the Tamil Tigers’ defeat in May few would have doubted that the rebels were behind an attack like this on an ethnic Sinhalese businessman. This time, the finger of suspicion points in a different direction.

Mr Alles is a key supporter of Sarath Fonseka, the former army chief, who led the campaign against the Tigers but is now challenging President Rajapaksa in an election on Tuesday. More

The Hindu (24/01) – Legacy of a dream

by S. Muthiah

As the Sri Lankan Presidential election is on January 26, we remember Senator Murugeysen Tiruchelvam, whose life and career was a search for a united Sri Lanka

I wonder how many remember Murugeysen Tiruchelvam, Q.C. whose legacy was a dream he had for his country. Over and over in the 1960s and 1970s, he reminded people of the roots of the ethnic fracturing happening in what was then Ceylon and suggested how it could be healed. It is a narration as little remembered by those worldwide free with advice to the political groups in the island nation as by the very political leaders of what has since become Sri Lanka. More

MyNews.In – Sri Lanka should take lead for ‘FSD SAARC’

by Hem Raj Jain

Through the upcoming election of January 26, Sri Lanka is sending self-defeating, misleading and deceptive signals world over, in the backdrop of the decimation of LTTTE and the elimination of its chief Prabhakaran that all is well in Sri Lanka and the majority Sinhalese community can do and should be allowed to do what ever they like in the affairs of Sri Lankan State. Whereas in the interest of peace and prosperity not only in Sri Lanka but also in South Asia region the following is to be understood and considered by Sri Lanka:-

(1)- Like other similar problems in South Asia (as was also in East Pakistan which culminated in Bangladesh in 1971) the regional aspiration was the main cause of almost half century old Sri Lankan Tamil problem too. The only solution to such problem is genuine federalism where all the civilian subjects are left with States (Provinces) whereas martial subjects like defense, foreign affairs, currency, citizenship, enforcement of human rights, communication, transport (National Highway / railway, air, water) etc are left with central / federal government. But federalism is normally sacrificed in South Asia due to prejudices of religion or language or ethnicity. More

Aljazeera English: Tensions grow over Sri Lanka vote

Amnesty International (22/01) –  Sri Lanka must halt pre-election attacks on political activitists

Amnesty International has called on Sri Lankan political leaders to investigate attacks on activists during one of the most violent presidential elections in the last 20 years.

The Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) said that more than 600 violent incidents had been reported until Thursday, including five murders and five attempted murders of political activists.

Police are investigating grenade attack on the home of Tiran Alles, a prominent opponent of the ruling party who has been receiving death threats for several months.

“These attacks highlight the prevalence of political violence in Sri Lanka even after the military defeat of the Tamil Tigers,” said Madhu Malhotra, Amnesty International’s deputy Asia-Pacific director.

“Attacks by paramilitary groups or thugs attached to politicians jeopardize prospects for a free and fair election.”

A number of NGO workers have spoken to Amnesty International about their fears over violence and intimidation ahead of the 26 January elections. Transfer of weapons from military sources (particularly army deserters) has led to an increase in armed crime including grenade attacks on political opponents. More