Ban Ki Moon concerned over Sri Lanka's lack of progress

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 March 2010, 04:09 GMT]
Expressing concerns on the lack of progress on "political reconciliation, the treatment of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and the setting up of an accountability process in Sri Lanka," United Nations Secretary General, confirmed that he intends to move forward on a group of experts which will advise him on setting the broad parameters and standards on the way ahead on establishing accountability concerning Sri Lanka, a UN News Center report said. "The accountability concerns possible breaches of international humanitarian law or abuses of human rights carried out during the conflict," the report said. Earlier, High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Navi Pillay, called on Sri Lanka to investigate the allegations itself, albeit with outside help.
Full story >>

Time for International Criminal Tribunal on Sri Lanka, says Boyle

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 March 2010, 22:03 GMT]
Dismissing the response by Colombo that Ban Ki Moon had not appointed panel of experts on other countries where there are "continuing armed conflicts on a large scale, involving major humanitarian catastrophes and causing the deaths of large numbers of civilians due to military action," as "simply untrue nonsense," Francis A. Boyle, professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, said that during the past year alone UN Human Rights Council had authorized Goldstone Commission investigation into Israel war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza. Noting that the "United Nations is just beginning to do the right thing for the Tamils," Prof Boyle urged that "Tamils around the world could do the same thing for establishing an International Criminal Tribunal for Sri Lanka (ICTSL)."
Full story >>

Experts to advise Ban Ki Moon on Sri Lanka's alleged war-crimes

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 March 2010, 16:00 GMT]
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to ask a panel of experts to advise the world body on "accountability issues" relating to possible human rights abuses in Sri Lanka, Reuters reported quoting spokesperson Martin Nesirky as saying. Ban has said an investigation of war crimes allegations should be handled by the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Navi Pillay, who has called on Sri Lanka to investigate the allegations itself -- albeit with outside help, Reuters added. Calling the action "unwarranted" Sri Lanka said, "[n]o such action had been taken about other states with continuing armed conflicts on a large scale, involving major humanitarian catastrophes and causing the deaths of large numbers of civilians due to military action."
Full story >>

Unacknowledged suffering can return to haunt history, says NPR

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 March 2010, 04:30 GMT]
During the popular Diane Rehm show in Washington's National Public Radio (NPR) Friday, responding to a question on the muted response of Obama administration to the slaughter of civilians in Sri Lanka, NPR's commentator Gjelten said, "When people feel that their suffering is not acknowledged and recognized by the international community, they tend to develop grudges, and they remember this. And they are scarred by that experience. One sobering lesson is that, when Nations feel historic grudge, it can come back to haunt history generations later... These grudges come back to the surface, and they can re-ignite in new conflicts."
Full story >>

French UN comments wrong, misleading, says Prof. Boyle

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 March 2010, 00:12 GMT]
Responding to United Nation's France Ambassador, Gerard Araud's, comment on UN inaction on Sri Lanka's civilian slaughter that the UN Secretary General cannot intervene against the wishes of a UN member state, Professor Boyle, an expert in International Law and a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, told TamilNet that the French statement is "simply wrong and deliberately misleading," and explained that "article 100 of the UN charter made it quite clear that UN Secretariat, including the Secretary General, was completely independent of the Member States of the United Nations."
Full story >>

UN can't go against member states, says French envoy

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 March 2010, 12:17 GMT]
French Ambassador to the UN, Gerard Araud, when asked by the Inner City Press (ICP) on the Secretary Ban Ki Moon's inaction in Sri Lanka "on the slaughter of civilians in Sri Lanka," said "[t]he Secretary General can't go against member states which did not want to intervene." Meanwhile, Inner City Press in a previous story reported quoting reliable UN sources that Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister, Rohitha Bogollagama, had solicited a "UN job for his son" from UN Secretary General's Chief of Staff Vijay Nambiar.
Full story >>

Orchestrated efforts suspected in silencing war witnesses

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 March 2010, 05:22 GMT]
Some recent 'abductions' of Eezham Tamil refugees who have come to Tamil Nadu after the war may have connections to orchestrated efforts in silencing war crime witnesses, allege informed media circles in Chennai. Within the last one month, a special group of people, released from the detention camps of Colombo, was sent to Tamil Nadu to carry out certain specific tasks, the sources said adding that the group includes some former LTTE members of key positions and those who were employed in the former Tamil Eelam civil administration, including the police.
Full story >>

Government engaged in setting up Sinhalese colonies in Vanni – Suresh Premachandran

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 March 2010, 15:34 GMT]
“Sri Lanka government is actively engaged in colonizing the Vanni districts of Mannaar, Mullaiththeevu and Ki’linochchi with the families of armed force personnel and Sinhalese people,” Suresh Premachandran, former Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian and one of the TNA candidates contesting Jaffna electoral district, said in a press briefing held Wednesday at his Jaffna office.
Full story >>

Ex-Somali defense minister in war-crimes trial in US

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 March 2010, 12:09 GMT]
U.S. Supreme Court will hear "war-crimes charges" against former Somali Defense minister and Prime Minister Mohamed Ali Samantar in a civil case this Wednesday, legal sources in Washington said. Samantar, 74, currently lives in Fairfax, Virginia, after fleeing his native country in 1991 to Rome, and then moving to the U.S. to join his wife and children in 1997. Samantar's five accusers say that Samantar bears command responsibility for a "regime of repeated rape, abduction, summary execution, and years long imprisonment in solitiary confinement" of many of their relatives. Samantar's attorneys argue that their client has immunity under Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act.
Full story >>

Sri Lanka soldiers remanded over rape of 9-year old Tamil girl

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 February 2010, 01:55 GMT]
Six Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers were taken into custody for allegedly molesting a nine-year-old Tamil girl at Ki'raan Vaazhaichcheani in the eastern Batticaloa district, sources in Batticaloa said. The victim identified one of the perpetrators during an identification parade held in Batticaloa Magistrate Court. Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) reported that the soldiers of the Digiliwatiya camp had threatened the protesting villagers, and the body of one protester was recovered in a pond near the SLA camp after the protests.
Full story >>

British Shadow FM calls for political reform, independent war-crime investigations

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 February 2010, 17:21 GMT]
Noting that "there is a natural affinity between Tamils in Britain and our [Conservative] Party," William Hague, the British Shadow Foreign Secretary, in his speech to the inaugural launch of Global Tamil Forum, warned that the "continued confinement [of thousands] will simply sow the seeds of discontent, [and] could lead to renewed conflict in years to come," called for "meaningful political reform," and said that "there should be a full independent inquiry into alleged war crimes committed by both sides during the final stages of the military conflict."
Full story >>

GTF launch well attended by British politicians

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 February 2010, 03:13 GMT]
British Foreign Secretary David Milliband, Conservative Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague and Liberal Democrats Shadow Foreign Secretary Ed Davey all addressed the Global Tamil Forum’s inaugural meeting in London on Wednesday, 24 February. The Global Tamil Forum (GTF) launch saw delegates from 14 countries gather in the UK House of Commons to be addressed by speakers from across the political spectrum, including parliamentarians, councilors and prospective parliamentary candidates. Some delegates were also invited in for a private meeting with Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Full story >>

SLA harrasses former Jaffna parliamentarian

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 February 2010, 20:16 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers Tuesday evening harassed former Member of Parliament from Jaffna Selvarajah Kajendren and a group of civilians who were discussing with him near a temple in Thirunelveali, media circles in Jaffna said.
Full story >>

Sri Lanka enters Information dark age?

[TamilNet, Sunday, 21 February 2010, 03:28 GMT]
Commenting on Sri Lanka's plans for additional cyber censorship, and the invitations extended to Chinese Information Technology experts for assistance in formulating Sri Lanka's internet policy framework, Prof. Kumar David, in the weekend edition of Lakbima says, "This [Rajapakse Government] is a frightened regime, truth and transparency give it diarrhoea; this country [Sri Lanka] has never before been threatened with despotic thought control replicating Chinese or any other Stalinism as the norm; no not ever before. The worst is that once this rotten lot start it, the next government and the ones thereafter, UNP, SF or whoever, will never roll it back; they too will exploit these despotic powers to the full, till one day the people throw out the whole putrid system."
Full story >>

Amnesty appeals for release of abducted Sri Lanka rights worker

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 February 2010, 11:41 GMT]
Amnesty International appealed for the release of Human rights defender Pattani Razeek, 55, head of the Community Trust Fund (CTF), a Sri Lankan NGO based in the town of Puttalam in North Western Province, who was allegedly abducted in a white van on the 11th of February. Amnesty also noted that the Police and the Human Rights Commission where the abduction was reported, have failed to followup leads related to the abduction.
Full story >>

Anniversary of Murugathasan’s death marked in Geneva

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 February 2010, 04:03 GMT]
Tamils from across Europe gathered in Geneva Saturday to commemorate the life Murugathasan Varnakulasingham, who immolated himself in February last year to draw attention to the plight of hundreds of thousands of Tamils being starved and killed in the Vanni, Sri Lanka. The commemoration coincidentally followed soon after former UN official, Gordon Weiss, admitted that the Sri Lankan government was responsible for the deaths of up to 40,000 Tamil civilians in the last days of the war alone. This is a figure far larger than the 7,000 the UN had previously claimed as being the number killed in the Vanni, but even that figure was disputed by the Sri Lankan government.
Full story >>

Perception on ex-LTTE members must be revised: former Aussie diplomat

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 February 2010, 10:55 GMT]
Australian authorities must cease bowing to influence and pressure from the Sri Lankan Government in its handling of asylum seekers said former Australian diplomat Bruce Haigh in a letter to the editor appearing in the Australian Financial Review and Canberra Times. Condemning the Rajapaksa administrations slaughter of “anywhere between 10-40,000 civilians”, its censoring of the media and rapid descent into dictatorship, Haigh described the Sri Lanka Government “corrupt” and “tarnished”, before urging a review on the assessment of LTTE members who were merely ”soldiers on one side in a particularly brutal and nasty civil war, a war in which both sides employed terrorism as a weapon” and who do not represent a security threat to Australia as stated by intelligence organisations.
Full story >>

Political complacency will hasten plunge into autocracy: Australian media

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 February 2010, 01:58 GMT]
Australia’s nonchalant approach to Sri Lanka’s rapid decline into a full-blown autocracy would be a betrayal of the inhabitants of the land “should Australia be seen to abandon support for democracy in order to preserve relations with an increasingly authoritarian ruler” warned The Age in an editorial on Friday. Citing the alleged slaughter of thousands of Tamil civilians, the abduction of journalists and the recent arrest of presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka, all under the gaze of the current administration, the paper urged the Rudd Government to take a pro-active stance as it has done to sanction other pacific nations that have defied the frameworks of democracy or risk failing its vested responsibilities as a regional power.
Full story >>

Theological premises of Maha Sangha raise questions

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 February 2010, 10:24 GMT]
The Sri Lankan government should overlook the alleged crimes committed by General (retd) Sarath Fonseka, as the government has taken in its fold 'criminals' such as Karuna and Pillayan, who 'massacred' Bhikus at Aranthalawa, launched a bomb attack on Dalada Maligawa and killed Sinhalese civilians and military personnel. Hence the government should overlook the alleged offences committed by the Sri Lankan Genreal (retd) Sarath Fonseka, who almost lost his life to 'safeguard the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka' and so it surely can overlook the alleged offences committed by him, said a statement signed by the chief prelates of the four chapters of the Buddhist Maha Sangha. Tamil circles question whether the statment outlines the principles of 'practical theology' of the Maha Sangha in the island.
Full story >>

Lies, responds Colombo, to accusations of "lying, misleading"

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 February 2010, 13:38 GMT]
Responding to accusations by a former United Nations spokesperson, Gordon Weiss, that up to 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the last battle, and that Sri Lanka was making statements that were "intentionally misleading or were lies," Sri Lanka's Director for the Media Centre for National Security, General Laxman Hulugalle, told a Colombo daily “[t]hat [Weiss's statement] is absolutely wrong information; Gordon Weiss was spreading false information, about the last stages of the war.”
Full story >>