Stop blocking a UN human rights monitoring mission in Sri Lanka
[May 10, 2008, 00:29], [Reliefweb]
The Asian Human Rights Commission strongly supports the call for a human rights monitoring mission by the United Nations as a measure to resuscitate the severely damaged criminal investigation capacity of the Sri Lankan policing system.
The state, as the sovereign, owes an obligation to investigate into all crimes irrespective as to whether these are done by organised criminal gangs, terrorists or state agencies themselves. This obligation implies that there needs to be a competent and impartial criminal investigation branch within the policing system which has not been corrupted or impaired by political interference. There is consensus within Sri Lanka that the capacity of the police investigation system has been gravely diminished due to political interference over several years and that its internal capacity for investigations has become extremely limited. When it comes to organised crimes, acts of terrorists and also extrajudicial acts of the military and the police, the police investigation system has not demonstrated any capacity for effective investigations in recent years.
[ Visit Website ]
Clashes Between Sri Lanka Military and Tamil Tigers Continue
[May 9, 2008, 17:03], [Enews20]
Sri Lanka’s Defense Ministry informed of the capture of Adampan town in northern Mannar district as a result of the two-hour fighting that took place Friday. There were seventeen casualties, among which fifteen Tamil Tigers rebels.
"They had built fortified connected bunkers in the area. The area had to be liberated for people to settle down there," said brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, as cited by BBC News.
Officials assert this is an outset in defeating and stopping guerilla actions in the area, because this capture will block guerilla movement and will harden their transportation of arms and supplies. They foreshadow to succeed annihilating rebels’ intentions and undertakings by the end of this year, as the International Herald Tribune informs.
[ Visit Website ]
Sri Lanka military seeks funds from Sinhala Diaspora
[May 9, 2008, 04:20], [TN]
The Sri Lankan government has launched a fundraising drive amongst Sinhala expatriates in support of its military. The initiative was formally launched Tuesday at the Sri Lankan High Commission in London and is to be continued in other capitals with Sinhala Diaspora. Several businessmen came forward to contribute towards the UK target of GBP 100,000, press reports said. The Sri Lankan High Commissioner in London, Mrs. Kshenuka Seniwiratne, bought the first ticket in a raffle for the project.
Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe, the Defence Attaché of the London High Commissioner launched the Sri Lanka Ministry of Defence (MoD) sponsored “Api Wenuwen Api” initiative on May 6th.
[ Visit Website ]
Sri Lanka links conflict to war on terror
[May 8, 2008, 16:55], [Toronto Star]
Returning to Colombo after several years, one is struck by the military checkpoints at key crossings where visitors are waved on but young Tamil males are not.
The fortified capital is pasted with war posters – a map of Sri Lanka, with an eye in the middle and a caption: "Are you alert? If you are, your village and your country are safe."
The media are uniformly bellicose: "Military makes advances." "There's no unwinnable war: Only a mission to crush terrorism." "The LTTE must be defeated at all costs."
The army is on the march, again, against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which has been seeking independence for the northern part of the island nation.
But the latest round of the 25-year-old conflict between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils – it has already claimed 70,000 lives and sent hundreds of thousands of Tamils into exile, including Canada – is being billed as part of the worldwide war on terror.
[ Visit Website ]
Burma cyclone: up to 50,000 dead and millions homeless, but still no call for aid
[May 7, 2008, 18:40], [Timesonline]
Even before you set foot in Burma, as the aircraft begins its descent towards Rangoon airport, it is obvious that something appalling has happened. Usually, the Irrawaddy delta is a land of deep and varied greens — the rice and vegetable fields, the river banks and the tropical trees that shade the towns and villages. But today the landscape is dominated by a different colour — the thick enveloping brown of river mud.
It fills the swollen rivers and creeks and lies in a sticky blanket over vast areas of rice paddy. Ponds have been turned into brown lakes, meadows have become marshes and somewhere down there are millions of people whose lives were overturned on Saturday by a rising tide of brown water.
[ Visit Website ]
NGOs say five nations unfit to serve on UN rights body
[May 7, 2008, 17:38], [France24]
Gabon, Bahrain, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Zambia do not deserve a seat on the Human Rights Council, the United Nations' top rights body, two non-governmental organizations said Tuesday.
In a joint report, UN Watch and Freedom House, which champion human rights worldwide, lamented that Gabon and Zambia were guaranteed seats on the council because of a lack of competition from more democratic countries in their African group.
Their report was unveiled here as the UN General Assembly is set to elect 15 new members of the Geneva-based Human Rights Council (HRC) -- one third of its membership -- on May 21.
"Democratic countries are squandering a golden opportunity to promote human rights through this important UN body," Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch, told reporters.
"Instead they lend international credibility to repressive governments that routinely violate the rights of their own citizens."
[ Visit Website ]
Universal Periodic Review of Sri Lanka
[May 7, 2008, 06:58], [HRW]
Major hostilities between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) resumed in mid-2006 and in January 2008 the government formally withdrew from the ceasefire in place since 2002. Since then the fighting has claimed hundreds of civilians lives, and tens of thousands more have been displaced. Human Rights Watch has long documented serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by both parties to the conflict. We are deeply concerned that with the ceasefire’s end, abuses will intensify.Human Rights Watch reiterates its call for the urgent deployment of a United Nations human rights field operation in Sri Lanka with a strong mandate to monitor abuses by all sides, publicly report its findings, and act to promote respect for basic rights at the local level. Further recommendations are provided at the end of this submission.
[ Visit Website ]
Rajapaksa to prorogue SL Parliament
[May 7, 2008, 04:57], [TN]
Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa has moved on to prorogue the sittings of the Sri Lankan Parliament until June 05 in a special announcement to be published Tuesday midnight, informed sources in Colombo said. The move comes amid the increased media attention and the debate on SLA casualties in the Northern Front as four days were left for the Eastern provincial elections where oppositions parties including the SLMC, UNP and the JVP have protested against the armed paramilitary in the East. Meanwhile, in a specially arranged televised broadcast, Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa, promised the remote villagers in the east that they would get everything that they have aspired for.
[ Visit Website ]
RIGHTS-SRI LANKA: 'My Daughter, the Terrorist'
[May 6, 2008, 16:42], [IPS]
OSLO, May 6 (IPS) - In Sri Lanka's brutal civil war some rebel women end their lives as suicide bombers that have killed hundreds over the years. A Norwegian documentary film that follows two 24-year-olds training to do just this has enraged the Sri Lankan government, but raises important questions about the conduct of war and its consequences.
The women are from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), often called the Tamil Tigers, a rebel group that has been fighting for an independent homeland for the Tamil ethnic minority since the 1970s. The demand has arisen, they say, in reaction to abuses and discrimination by the Sri Lankan government. The documentary 'My Daughter the Terrorist' follows Darshika and Puhalchudar, two elite female soldiers in the Tamil Tigers, as they train for missions that can include suicide bombings against perceived enemy targets. It also talks to the mother of one, painting a tragic picture of loss and sacrifice in war.
Producer and co-director Morten Daae says that while the suicide bombers are not religious martyrs, they are revered as heroes. "In the West there is a preconception that all suicide bombers are fanatical Muslims expecting virgins in the afterlife, but that is not the case here," Daae told IPS. "They don't believe they will be rewarded in the afterlife or anything like that, but they will be remembered every year on Heroes' Day, when all the villages ceremoniously honour their individual martyrs with pictures and candles.
[ Visit Website ]
2,000 Sri Lankan soldiers killed last year – Army chief
[May 4, 2008, 06:55], [TN]
Over two thousand Sri Lankan Army (SLA) soldiers were killed and four thousand wounded in the battles of 2007, the commander of the SLA, Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka told a conference at Army Headquarters last week, the Sunday Times reported. He claimed over five thousand Tamil Tigers were also killed last year. Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan government has forbidden military officials from giving interviews and launched a hunt for those leaking details to the media. The government has instructed ambulances transporting wounded soldiers from Ratmalana airport to hospitals in Colombo not to use their sirens, the paper said.
Lt. Gen. Fonseka was addressing Principal Staff Officers and Directors at Army Headquarters in a conference held every four months.
In the context of government anger over military officials leaking details of battlefield setbacks to the media, he told the 90-minute conference: "We have not given this [2007 casualty figures] to the media. If anyone present wants to give it, they are free to do so."
[ Visit Website ]
Human rights abuses in Sri Lanka flourish under veil of secrecy
[May 3, 2008, 00:16], [AI]
Ensuring respect for human rights around the world very often relies on impartial and rigorous media coverage – without exposure and public scrutiny abuses can flourish under a veil of secrecy and denial.
The importance of the media in conflict situations cannot be overstated, without reports, pictures and film of the fighting and the violence, no-one knows enough to put the pressure on the participants to ensure human rights are respected.
This need is particularly strong in Sri Lanka, where fatalities on all sides are believed to be very high with large numbers of civilians caught in the crossfire. All parties to the conflict are responsible for grave violations of human rights and breaches of international humanitarian law.
[ Visit Website ]
War-torn Sri Lanka is the last sick man of the region
[May 2, 2008, 05:25], [Guardian,U.K.]
Time is running out for the great south Asian boast. By the end of this year, according to a new year prediction by Sri Lanka's army chief, Lieutenant-General Sarath Fonseka, his guerrilla opponents - the Tamil Tigers - would be "extinct". They and their demands for a homeland for the Tamil minority would vanish from the field, and after 25 years of war the island and its Sinhalese majority could enjoy peace again.
An end to Sri Lanka's bloodletting is certainly overdue. The country has become the last sick man of the region. But on the pattern of many other democracies, the country's elected politicians have not responded well to the legitimate demands of ethnic, religious, and regional minorities. Tamils turned to violence and terrorism after years of frustration.
[ Visit Website ]
BJP asks India to mediate between Sri Lanka and LTTE
[Apr 29, 2008, 16:39], [Outlook India]
Asking the Centre to play a 'major role' to bring both the Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE to negotiating table, the BJP today said the recent meeting between Priyanka Vadhra and Nalini, a convict in the Rajiv Gandhi Assassination case, was done with a 'motif'.
"The Indian Government should play a major role to bring both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan Government to negotiating table," BJP president Rajnath Singh told reporters here.
Reacting to Priyanka's highly publicised visit to the Vellore Central Prison on March 19 to meet Nalini, he said "Her visit to see Nalini was a diplomatic tactics used by the Congress with a motif."
[ Visit Website ]
Sri Lankan soldiers and families speak to the WSWS
[Apr 29, 2008, 14:55], [World Socialist Web Site (WSWS)]
Hundreds of injured soldiers have been hospitalised in Sri Lanka after a military offensive in the Muhamalai-Nagarkovil-Kilali area on April 22-24 was beaten back by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The operation involved about 800 troops directly, backed by another 5,000 personnel.
Wounded solders are now undergoing treatment at the Palali military hospital on the northern Jaffna peninsula, Anuradhapura hospital in north-central province, the National and Military hospitals in Colombo, and the Kalubowila and Jayawardenapura hospitals in Colombo’s suburbs.
Nervous about the political impact of the defeat, the government has imposed de facto censorship by barring journalists from the hospitals. Military police guard the entrances to wards where injured soldiers are being treated.
India works on $100 mn soft loan package for Lanka
[Apr 28, 2008, 15:18], [EconomicTames]
NEW DELHI: Call it an India fund for fighting Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. In a step that could have political and diplomatic ramfications, New Delhi is finalising a soft loan package of $100 million (Rs 400 crore) for Sri Lankan defence department to buy arms and ammunition, sources told SundayET.
Though the island nation does not come under the category of the Least Developed Countries (LDC), India has agreed to extend the loan at a highly confessional interest rate of just 2%. India normally charges an interest at London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) plus 1- 2% for extending term loans to a country of Sri Lanka’s stature.
[ Visit Website ]
|
