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Update – July 29^th 2011

Youtube

Exclusive: New Sri Lanka ‘war crimes’ evidence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZC1uclgbc0&feature=player_embedded

ColomboPage

Sri Lanka to completely lift Emergency Regulations by end of 2011

Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 06:27 pm SL Time, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.

July 28, Colombo: The Sri Lankan government says it has decided to completely lift the powerful Emergency Regulations by the end of this year.

Cabinet Spokesperson and Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella at the Cabinet press briefing said the government would continue to gradually ease the Emergency Regulations until the end of the year when it will be completely lifted.

He added that the decision to gradually remove the Emergency Regulations was not compelled by any pressure from external forces.

Sri Lanka relaxed several provisions of the emergency law in May 2010 as the country was returning to normalcy after the conclusion of the war a year before.

The government had said earlier that the state of emergency, continually imposed since the assassination of Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar in August 2005 by the LTTE, will gradually be eased.

The Minister noted that the security and administration of Sri Lanka is a domestic responsibility of the government.

When queried, Rambukwella completely denied that last Thursday’s US House Foreign Relations Committee resolution to ban development aid unless Sri Lanka lifted emergency regulations had played any role on the government’s decision.

"The US action also was a domestic issue of that country. We do not take issues of other countries when we arrive on our decisions," Rambukwella told the media.

Wanderlust

Controversy over Sri Lankan land development

28th July 2011

Tourism ‘land grabs’: are local communities, habitats and wildlife at risk or is unemployment being reduced and economic welfare improved?

The development of Kalpitiya, a peninsula on the west coast of Sri Lanka and a popular destination for travellers, is causing concern amongst campaigners.

Sri Lankan and international campaigning groups, including Tourism Concern and the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, have called for an immediate halt to the development of Kalpitiya, claiming that it will, “destroy livelihoods, threaten food security, and wreak havoc on the environment.”

The project is being supported by the World Bank as part of a four year ‘Sustainable Tourism Development Project’ signed with Sri Lanka in November 2010.

Tourism Concern claim that 1,000 fishing families, as well as farmers, small tourism businesses and traders have not been properly consulted about the tourism project, the largest in Sri Lanka to date, and that their land is vulnerable to land grabs due to a lack of title deeds.

The campaign group say that although the development is said to boost employment, “Most residents doubt whether such tourism infrastructure will meet their most pressing needs.”

Herman Kumara of Sri Lanka’s National Fishworkers’ Solidarity Movement said, “Whole communities face an imminent threat of displacement. We need a National Commission to review the plans, to listen to the concerns of the people of Kalpitiya and ensure their needs are met.”

However, Sanjika Perera, UK Director of Sri Lanka Tourism said, “The concerns of the community are being addressed along with tourism development.

“We work closely with a lot of international organisations and our tourism development master plan is in accordance with the UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organisation) guidelines. All tourism development zones have incorporated community involvement and sustainable development initiatives to address the concerns of the affected communities.”

Gehan de Silva, Director of Jetwing (a leading Sri Lankan hotel business) and Bradt travel guide writer added, “Kalpitiya has also gained prominence as one of the top spots in the world for seeing Sperm Whales. The Sperm Whale Line is just fifteen minutes away by boat.

“Obviously the legal rights of local people have to be respected. But it is inevitable that the present government will push ahead with ambitious plans for tourism development as part of a plan to reduce unemployment and improve the economic welfare of people.”

Despite the development’s website stating that Kalpitiya “is a marine sanctuary with a diversity of habitats ranging from bar reefs, flat coastal plains, saltpans, mangroves swamps, salt marshes and vast sand dune beaches,” they also state that the following investment opportunities will be available: theme parks, cable car tours, high speed boat safaris, a golf course and an underwater amusement park.

ColomboPage

Sri Lanka Tamil party cries foul over measure to reduce parliamentary seats for Jaffna

Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 07:02 pm SL Time, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.

July 28, Colombo: The major Tamil political party in Sri Lanka, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has said the decision of the Elections Department to reduce the number of parliamentary seats allocated to the Jaffna District was unfair.

TNA parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran has told the media that the decision to reduce the parliamentary seats from ten to six was not a fair decision.

The Elections Department announced earlier that the number of seats allocated to the Jaffna District may be reduced due to the decline in the number of voters by 320,000 since 2009.

The media reported that the four remaining seats would be allocated to the Ratnapura, Matara, Kurunegala and Badulla Districts.

However, Premachandran has explained that many civilians who have fled from Jaffna during the war were still in the process of returning to the country.

The parliamentarian has added that the party would discuss the matter with the Elections Department.

IBN Live

Jaffna to lose 3 parliamentary seats

PTI | 07:07 PM,Jul 28,2011

Colombo, Jul 28 (PTI) Sri Lanka’s Tamil-dominated Jaffna district will have its parliamentary seats slashed from nine to six as the Election Commission said the region had witnessed number of voters dropping to half the previous figure of 700,000.The officials said the fall in number of parliamentarians was due to the country’s complicated proportional representation system of elections.Vowing to oppose the move, the pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance (TNA) which recently swept the local election in the province, alleged that the fall in voters had been due to people being forced to leave their homes due to a three-decade long ethnic violence."People are still returning from India after the end of the war. The diaspora still feel unsafe to return to Jaffna but when they decide to return you will find that they will not be able to exercise their franchise," Suresh Premachandran, the senior TNA MP said.Elections commissioner’s department officials said that the Jaffna district will have just six MPs representing the voters as opposed to the current number of nine MPs.The decision has been made in view of the decreased number of voters in Jaffna. The current voter figure dropped to just over 300,000 from the previous 700,000.During the height of the military conflict in the north and east when the LTTE waged a war to create a separate homeland for the Sri Lanka Tamils, a large number of Jaffna residents fled the area, either migrated mostly to West or located themselves elsewhere in the country, mostly in the capital Colombo.

Outlook

Jaffna to Lose 3 Parliamentary Seats

Sri Lanka’s Tamil-dominated Jaffna district will have its parliamentary seats slashed from nine to six as the Election Commission said the region had witnessed number of voters dropping to half the previous figure of 700,000.

The officials said the fall in number of parliamentarians was due to the country’s complicated proportional representation system of elections.

Vowing to oppose the move, the pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance (TNA) which recently swept the local election in the province, alleged that the fall in voters had been due to people being forced to leave their homes due to a three-decade long ethnic violence.

"People are still returning from India after the end of the war. The diaspora still feel unsafe to return to Jaffna but when they decide to return you will find that they will not be able to exercise their franchise," Suresh Premachandran, the senior TNA MP said.

Elections commissioner’s department officials said that the Jaffna district will have just six MPs representing the voters as opposed to the current number of nine MPs.

The decision has been made in view of the decreased number of voters in Jaffna. The current voter figure dropped to just over 300,000 from the previous 700,000.

During the height of the military conflict in the north and east when the LTTE waged a war to create a separate homeland for the Sri Lanka Tamils, a large number of Jaffna residents fled the area, either migrated mostly to West or located themselves elsewhere in the country, mostly in the capital Colombo.

Jakarta Globe

Asia Needs to Act to Protect Free Speech, Reporters Say

Ismira Lutfia | July 28, 2011

The death of SUN TV journalist Ridwan Salamun, honored in this memorial poster in Denpasar, Bali, showed that reporters in Indonesia face significant risks. (JG Photo/J.P. Christo)

Sri Lankan journalist Kumara Alagiyawanna was forced to flee his country last year after receiving threats over his campaign against the misuse of state media resources during the presidential election there.

Three months after the January ballot, Kumara was informed that he was at imminent risk of being attacked or abducted if he remained in the country. That forced him to leave Sri Lanka for a month.

“I did not want to leave Sri Lanka and I never applied for asylum, but I received protection in Malaysia where I stayed and worked as an intern,” Kumara told a symposium on the criminalization of free speech, expression and opinion in Asia, held this month in Jakarta.

Kumara returned home in May last year, but by then had been dismissed from his job at state-owned broadcaster Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (SLRC).

He took up work as a freelance journalist while serving as a member of the executive committee at the Free Media Movement of Sri Lanka, after refusing to negotiate his reinstatement with SLRC management or compromise his struggle for an independent media devoid of political interference.

However, he said threats to silence journalists with dissenting views of the government were still rampant.

“Any journalists who attempt to voice dissent can easily be targeted and all journalists are treated equally bad in Sri Lanka,” he said.

“There is no national or ethnic boundary in this fight for media freedom,” he added.

More than 85 people working in the media industry have been killed in Sri Lanka over the past 30 years.

Although many died in the long-running civil war between the Tamil minority and the Sinhalese-dominated government, a number were targeted because of their reporting or because they empowered others to do so.

And despite the end of the war and a change in the government, none of those attacks have been investigated and few people have been prosecuted or punished for assaulting media workers, Kumara said.

Although the number of attacks against journalists has decreased there in recent years, he said this was mainly because “no one says anything worth getting into trouble [over].”

Kumara’s story is not uncommon in Asia, where many governments continue to violate or turn a blind eye to breaches of freedom of expression and the press.

Another speaker at the Jakarta forum, Melinda Quintos de Jesus, told of her experience advocating for journalists in the Philippines, where 121 journalists and media workers have been killed because of their work in the past 25 years.

Seventy-nine of those cases took place during the administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

“And there have been four cases already under the current [Benigno] Aquino administration,” said de Jesus, who is the executive director of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility.

She stressed the importance of political leaders speaking about the need for probing and prosecuting journalists’ assailants so that “everybody listens.”

“We need to protect the journalists because journalists are not just the individual journalists — journalists are institutional,” she said.

“We call it the Fourth Estate and we in the Philippines have been taught about press freedom and yet we have the lousiest records in terms of defending them,” she added.

Though the situation in Indonesia is not as bad, there are signs that protection of freedom of expression and human rights is on the slide.

Poengky Indarti, from the rights watchdog Imparsial, said journalists were among those targeted by religious or ethnic fundamentalist groups.

She cited the case of Sun TV journalist Ridwan Salamun, who was killed in August last year while reporting on a communal clash in Tual, Maluku.

At his murder trial, the three men charged with his death were all acquitted after prosecutors argued that they killed the journalist in self-defense.

Nezar Patria, chairman of the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), blamed the verdict on the fact the judicial process in Indonesia was still subject to political pressure.

The problem, he said, was how to educate members of the public who feel aggrieved at media reports to file complaints to the Press Council, instead of resorting to violence.

“But this hasn’t been well promoted, especially in other regions in the country where violence against journalists is still rampant,” he said.

In Thailand, the controversial lese-majeste law — which protects the Thai monarchy from statements deemed offensive and has been used to prosecute people critical of the royal family — has been singled out by a United Nations official as another curb to freedom of expression.

Frank La Rue, the UN special rapporteur for freedom of expression and opinion, pledged his commitment to push for the UN to release a statement on the legislation. He stressed the statement was not meant to be a criticism of any Thai administration.

“The press release is being put out because of the [lese-majeste] legislation, because the legislation itself is bad legislation.

“It’s a violation of freedom of expression and it does criminalize human rights. Those prisoners should be seen as political prisoners,” La Rue said.

Asian Human Rights Commission

SRI LANKA: The body of the disappeared human rights activist Pattini Razeek exhumed

July 29, 2011

Mr. Pattini Razeek, a well known human rights activist and a member of the executive committee of Forum Asia disappeared on February 11, 2010, yesterday (July 28) his body was exhumed before the Valachchenai Magistrate. The body had been buried within a half built private house in a remote village in Uddamaveli, Valachchanair and the location was identified due to a lead given by a suspect. The body has been sent to the government analyst department for scientific identification on the orders of the Magistrate. For the last one and a half years there had been a continuous demand from the members of his family, from the people in his residential area as well as from human rights organisations in Sri Lanka and abroad for an investigation into his disappearance. Razeek was the head of the Community Trust Fund (CTF), a Sri Lankan NGO based in the town of Puttalam.

The discovery of the body should be the beginning of the process of uncovering the circumstances leading to the death of this human rights activist and community leader. It is the duty of the government to ensure a thorough enquiry into all the circumstances surrounding the mystery of this disappearance and to place before the courts the entire evidence relating to the conspiracy for this murder. Obviously this murder and the disappearance is a part of a well thought out criminal conspiracy.

Pictures courtesy of Daily Mirror

The circumstances of this disappearance and murder suggest the involvement of powerful forces for the causing of this crime as well as for the attempt to hide the body. The reports published earlier suggest political motives for this murder. The events relating to the disposal of the Community Trust Fund also suggests that there were interested parties to make claims for this trust fund after his disappearance. All these factors need to be thoroughly investigated and brought to the notice of the court and the public.

The public in Sri Lanka has a great interest in the outcome of these investigations. For a long time the causing of forced disappearances has become a common phenomenon in the country. So far there has not been a single case of a disappearance which has led to the discovery of the culprits. The perpetrators of disappearances have enjoyed immunity in almost all instances of such occurrences.

This first discovery of the body of a person who was considered to have been disappeared should lead to a great demand from the community for accountability. As the inquiries are of the greatest public importance such inquiries should be conducted with transparency. It is necessary, not only to uncover the direct perpetrators of this crime but what is even more important is to uncover the conspiracy behind this disappearance and murder.

The Asian Human Rights Commission urges the government of Sri Lanka to conduct speedy and credible inquiries through competent and impartial investigators and to speedily bring the matter before the court for trial. The AHRC also urges complete transparency into the inquiries so that the public should have access to all the information relating to this heinous crime. The AHRC also urges the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to ensure proper monitoring of this important case with the view that the circumstances surrounding such occurrence could be fully revealed.

Thousands of other cases of forced disappearances remain unresolved. The families of such disappeared persons should be given opportunities to make their complaints to competent authorities and to demand inquiries into such disappearances. The failure to ensure enquiries into such heinous crimes amounts to a conspiracy to ensure secrecy relating to such crimes. As the numbers of the persons making such complaints are many there should be a more robust response from the government to ensure credible enquiries.

At the time of the recovery of Razeek’s body the case of Prageeth Eknaligoda will naturally come to the minds of the Sri Lankan public. The demand for enquiries into his forced disappearance has been made forcefully by his family as well as many concerned groups in Sri Lanka as well as by the international community. It is the duty of the Sri Lankan governemtn to responde to such demands and to ensure a credible inquiry by competent and impartial investigators into his disappearance.

ColomboPage

Government official says people in Sri Lanka’s North facing many social issues

Fri, Jul 29, 2011, 09:56 am SL Time, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.

July 29, Colombo: A Sri Lankan government official in the war-torn North says that violence against northern women has increased in the past one year with many social issues also plaguing the community.

Jaffna District Secretary Imelda Sukumar has told the media that there were numerous social issues in the area including unregistered premature marriages and pregnancies among minors.

She has said the number of such cases varied from 20 to 100 every month and that most of the incidents were reported from hospitals in the area.

She has observed that the main reason for the youth to take up various lifestyles is the frustration they suffer as a result of being neglected by their parents.

Sukmar says the government officials are addressing the issue. She has said that women field officers have commenced a campaign to educate the youth and their families on the social ills while the Women’s Affairs and Childcare Ministry was also engaged in a programme to address the social issues in the Jaffna District.

Ministry of Defence – Sri Lanka / Daily News – Sri Lanka

C4 has many concoctions

*Govt rejects allegation in latest one

*More episodes to follow

The government yesterday totally rejects claims made in the latest Channel – 4 video, Mass Media and Communications Minister Keheliya Rambukwella said yesterday. Answering queries raised by the media during the weekly cabinet briefing, the minister said that it was another attempt to tarnish the image of the country using fabricated material.

The minister recalled, he had predicted that the Channel – 4 possessed several such videos at the time when the first one surfaced.

"Plans to air these videos at the time by Channel 4 had to be shelved due to efforts taken by the government to counter them", he added.

When questioned on his reaction over an alleged comment made by former President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s son over the phone to his mother regarding the channel 4 video, the minister said that if this was truly the case it was very unfortunate.

He recalled that the LTTE had tried to assassinate former President Kumaratunge using a suicide bomber which blinded her in one eye. The British Channel 4 aired another video on Wednesday night featuring a man with his face blurred on the screen. It claimed that the man on the video was a Lankan soldier engaged in the final stages of the conflict.

However, Military Spokesman Major General Ubhaya Medewala denied that any solider gave such an interview to the Channel 4.

Speaking over the phone Major General Medewala said: "They are attempting to justify the fake videos previously aired by the TV station’.

Meanwhile, when questioned on what action the government would take in the face of repeated airing of such videos by Channel 4, Minister Rambukwella said that the government would make use of all avenues at its disposal to counter such false propaganda.

The government has taken a number of steps to make the world community aware of the true happenings during the ‘humanitarian operation, he observed.

Minister Rambukwella said that the detailed report compiled by the Defence Ministry on the conduct of the humanitarian operation would be made available to all. The report was handed over to the President on Wednesday by Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. The details of the report would be made available to the international community through relevant Sri Lankan missions abroad. Through Lankan missions all steps would be taken to make the international community aware in this regard. The minister also described the report as a ‘public document’ and added that it would soon be released to the local media.

Courtesy: Daily News

Deccan Chronicle

Delhi’s Lankan limp

The recent local council elections in Sri Lanka threw up a surprise for President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his ruling coalition, the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA).

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) bagged 18 out of 26 seats in the Tamil-majority northern and eastern provinces.

Until the destruction of the LTTE two years ago, the TNA was under the Tigers’ sway. In the run-up to the general elections last year, it dropped its separatist agenda and declared itself in favour of regional autonomy for the north and east.

The UPFA had put up an energetic campaign, hoping that success in the elections would uphold its claims about working for the development of these areas. An electoral endorsement would also have come in handy at a time when the government’s conduct of the war against the LTTE is once again attracting international attention.

The unexpected electoral reverse may not be of immediate political significance. But it is likely to turn the spotlight on Mr Rajapaksa’s solemn assurances of a “political solution” for the Tamils. This, of course, is a matter of some interest for India as well.

Even before the war was formally terminated, Mr Rajapaksa declared that a political settlement would follow in the wake of the military victory.

Two years on, there has been little progress. Admittedly priority had to be given to dealing with the immediate problems posed by the decades-long conflict. Yet, both the pace and the manner in which the post-war reconstruction has been tackled raise serious doubts about the government’s intentions.

Contrary to claims about speedy repatriation, nearly a third of the displaced people continue to be held in internment camps.

An estimated 180,000 people remain in these camps and other temporary dwellings. Those released from the camps did not necessarily end up in their homes. For much has changed in the northern and eastern provinces.

Almost 150 permanent Army camps now dot the landscape in these parts of the country. Large slices of land have been converted into high-security zones, from which erstwhile occupants and owners are debarred.

The Jaffna peninsula, for instance, has 15 such zones amounting to a fifth of its total land mass and displacing about 130,000 residents. There are reports of land grabs and forcible displacement of owners being undertaken to promote ventures by non-Tamil businessmen.

Almost all reconstruction activities are controlled by the military and a Presidential Task Force. The governors of the northern and eastern provinces are former generals. Unsurprisingly, priority has been given to the construction of housing for soldiers and their families. The military has insinuated itself deeply into the political economy of these provinces. An officers’ mess in Jaffna has even been made over into a luxury resort.

There is a discernible pattern to the settlement and militarisation. And it suggests that the government is less than sincere about its desire to devolve power to the provinces as part of a political settlement. Mr Rajapaksa and his officials routinely brush aside such suggestions.

Speaking recently to an Indian newspaper, he observed that the camps in the north were no different from those in other parts of the country. Behind the smokescreen of such dissembling the government seems to be working towards hollowing out the idea of provincial autonomy.

It is no coincidence that Mr Rajapaksa has openly stated that subjects like land and law and order will not come within the purview of the provincial governments in any future dispensation. Viewed in conjunction with the vastly enhanced powers of the President under the 18th Amendment, it is not clear just what provincial autonomy will amount to.

Unfortunately, the results of the recent local council elections might end up strengthening the prevailing conservative views on a “political settlement”.

So far, the Indian government has been quietly urging Sri Lanka to capitalise on the victory against the Tigers and forge a settlement. Its position is neatly encapsulated in the joint statement issued by the foreign ministers of both countries a couple of months ago. India sought the “expeditious implementation of measures” towards resettlement and “genuine reconciliation”.

These included early return of displaced persons to their homes, early withdrawal of emergency regulations, investigations into allegations of human rights violations and restoration of normality. The statement also noted that a “devolution package, building upon the 13th Amendment, would contribute towards creating the necessary conditions for such reconciliation”.

It should be obvious to New Delhi that the Sri Lankan government is at some remove from substantial realisation of these measures. India’s reluctance to lean more heavily on Colombo stems from two related factors.

First, it does not wish to be seen as ganging up with other (primarily Western) powers against Sri Lanka and so accentuate the hyper-nationalist, not to say xenophobic, mood of the current government. Thus India is willing to urge Sri Lanka to look into instances of human rights violations, but will not support calls for an independent war crimes investigation. Second, New Delhi realises that its leverage with Colombo is limited.

Over half of all the foreign aid and loan to Sri Lanka in the past year flowed from China. By contrast, India’s financial contribution and, more importantly, its ability to deliver on projects seems pale.

Neither of these, however, is good reason to adopt a hands-off approach. India would rightly want to avoid getting bogged down by the Tamil question the way it did in the 1980s. But such overt intervention and our current stance are not the only alternatives open to us.

Besides, by allowing the issue to drift we may be setting ourselves up for problems in the future. If moderate Tamil political parties in Sri Lanka are unable to achieve an acceptable constitutional settlement, the agenda of the Tamils will be usurped by the more militant diaspora.

India’s Sri Lanka policy has for long been hamstrung by the absence of credible, democratic Tamil parties. The results of local bodies elections in Sri Lanka present a window of opportunity that we can ill-afford to miss.

Srinath Raghavan is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi

Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice – Blog

New Report: Sri Lanka – an attack on media freedom

The Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice has today launched a new briefing on press freedom in Sri Lanka. you can read it here.

It paints a bleak picture of life for journalists in the nation ranked 4th in the Committee to Protect Journalists’ impunity index. The murder of 34 journalists in the last 7 years – none of which has resulted in the conviction of a single perpetrator – is portrayed as the tip of an iceberg of mechanisms used to silence dissenting voices.

Torture, abduction, and intimidation of family members are routinely used to dissuade members of the media from speaking out, as are the often vitriolic rebuttals by newspaper columnists loyal to the Sri Lankan Government and the postings of comments online.

As Edward Mortimer, Chair of the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, said, "the situation may now seem better than it was in 2009, when journalists were being abducted at a frightening rate, but in actual fact the number of such incidents has only gone down because the Sri Lankan government has effectively cowed its critics into silence."

Speaking at a packed benefit evening at the Arcola theatre in Dalston, Fred Carver, Campaign Director for the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, said, "When we hear about the war crimes that were committed in the first few months of 2009, it is natural to ask how it was possible that the government and the LTTE could get away with such things. The answer is that you have to be very very brave to talk about such things in Sri Lanka."

He later added, "Other reports have attempted to capture the Sri Lankan state’s attempt to intimidate journalists into silence. This report show the effect this is having on the nature of debate in Sri Lanka – and how a culture of fear and self censorship is allowing the Sri Lankan regime to go almost entirely unchallenged in Sri Lanka.

"Just last week Radio Netherlands wrote about how their personnel were subject to a "white van abduction", demonstrating that no one is safe from attack and that the situation is not improving.

"We urgently need the international community to take action to protect those relatively few brave journalists who do speak out from Sri Lanka and to support journalists in exile and other independent media in their reporting of Sri Lankan affairs."

Sri Lanka: An attack on press freedom (pdf)

Cartoon by Latuff2.