Archive for the ‘Human Rights’

Reconciliation, Rights & Freedom: Four years after the end of war in SRi Lanka

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Image courtesy The Telegraph It is now 4 years after the end of the war. The way we Sri Lankans will remember the end of the war is likely to demonstrate once again how divided we are, as North and South, as Sinhalese and Tamils. Some Tamil friends in the North told me that they will try to have some events to remember the large numbers who were killed and disappeared, despite the past threats and intimidations. “We will try to have it quietly and low profile way” was what one friend told me. It is unlikely that families of those killed, disappeared, injured, those whose land has been occupied by the military after the war, will be in the mood to celebrate. This of course should not be confused with the fact that they are indeed relieved the war is over – that they don’t need to be in bunkers, duck shells, bombs and shooting, run over dead bodies…

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Freedom of assembly in post-war Sri Lanka

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Sandya Ekneligoda, wife of missing journalist Prageeth Ekneligoda, center,  speaks to reporters during a protest rally out side the parliament in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013. Relatives, colleagues and opposition activists staged a protest rally Thursday demanding that the Sri Lanka government hold proper investigation to find out what happened to Ekneligoda who went missing in January 2010. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena, via Inquirer News) The war in Sri Lanka ended on 18th May 2009. During three decades of war, civil liberties were severely curtailed, often in an arbitrary manner, without possibilities of challenging them or seeking remedies through independent bodies. The Ministry of Defense, the military and police reigned supreme. Even judicial discretion was curtailed, with the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) compelling Judges to obey wishes of the Ministry of Defense and the police through the Attorney General’s department when it came to remanding people, bail etc. The PTA remains as a dreaded legal weapon in the…

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Conviction of Efraín Ríos Montt and the need for accountability

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Image courtesy The Guardian On 10 May 2013, former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced to 80 years in prison. It was the first time that an ex-head of state had been convicted for genocide by a court in his or her own country. The case is of international importance, including in Sri Lanka. President Ríos Montt had ordered the deaths of 1,771 people of the Ixil Maya ethnic group in 1982 and 1983. He was in power during the bloodiest phase of a civil war that lasted from 1960-1996, during which an estimated 200,000 were killed and 45,000 more “disappeared”. Others were raped, tortured in other ways or driven from their homes. While mass murder and ethnic cleansing took place in the countryside, in the cities trade unionists and student leaders were seized by the security forces. The military were supposedly battling left-wing guerrillas but civilians suffered in huge…

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Is the Tamil Diaspora Against Unity in Sri Lanka?

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“The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes The Tamil Diaspora is a diverse ethnic group. Amongst it, the majority are strongly connected to their kith and kin in the island of Sri Lanka. Arguably, the Tamil Diaspora is also a very powerful body. It reflects the aspirations and the grievances of the Tamil people in the island of Sri Lanka who continue to live under severe suppression, in an open prison. Considering the Sri Lankan state’s oppression of the Tamil people on the ground, the interaction between them and the Tamil Diaspora, though invisible, is very efficient and effective. Since May 2009’s Tamil genocide, the role of the Tamil Diaspora has reshaped to rebuild the lives, and social, economic, cultural and political structures of their beloved ones. This is no easy task, given a powerful section of the Tamil Diaspora chooses not to…

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First Failure in Geneva: Trap, Blunder or Model?

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However bad Sri Lanka’s foreign policy is and external relations are, they have yet to hit the nadir that they did under President Jayewardene in the 1980s. The first ever resolution on the human rights situation in Sri Lanka adopted in Geneva by the Human Rights Commission was in March 1987, while the first decision, which it ‘recalls’ in the resolution, was in March 1984, as was reported in the Lanka Guardian at the time (Vol 9, No 23, April 1 1987, p18).  This episode, which in a lead story in the same journal three months later was derided by its Editor as a “roasting”, has recently been disinterred and touted as nothing less than a model of professional diplomacy which should have been looked up to as a lodestar by Sri Lanka’s representatives in Geneva May 2009. A persistent attempt at a revisionist history of Sri Lanka’s diplomacy posits our performance at the UN Human Rights Commission (the predecessor…

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Police in Sri Lanka show their true saffron colours

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Lest we forget, the Sri Lankan police, who act under the orders and protection of the Ministry of Defence, are far from doyens of impartiality. A few weeks ago, we noted that ”it is quite clear that four policemen, no more than 3 feet away from and staring directly into the face of the Buddhist “monk” who is engaged in destroying private property isn’t quite enough these days for an arrest to be made”. There is evidence, from no less than the Government’s Minister for Justice himself, that the Muslim owners of the property the “monks”destroyed were forced to withdraw their charges against the perpetrators. Contrast this Police inaction and collusion with fascist forces with their behaviour today in Colombo, against a peaceful vigil, as clearly indicated in a Facebook page that promoted the event. Sirasa TV captures the response by the Police in grim detail. Clearly then, in Sri Lanka today, Buddhist “monks” destroying private property are kosher, but citizens attempting…

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Responding to Geneva by Exemplary Restitution

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Robert O. Blake has once said, “International mechanisms can become appropriate in cases where states are either unable or unwilling to meet their obligations.” After Geneva March 2013, US officials have reiterated this in stricter terms. TNA MP Suresh Premachandran has said the final Geneva Resolution will not relieve the affected Tamils and reminded the UNHRC wish (2012) to implement the LLRC recommendations, which allegedly has been defaulted. TNA Leader R Sampanthan has said that if Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) complied by implementing the LLRC recommendations, a second resolution could have been avoided. However, Japan’s Yasushi Akashi has made a favourable statement for Sri Lanka, quoting his visits to North Sri Lanka and how “the whole country coped with the challenges” In Geneva Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe described positive developments.  Later, Minister Wimal Weerawansa exhorted that Sri Lanka is unshaken by Geneva resolutions, while Minister DEW Gunasekara feared worse befalling by government defaulting. Is this confusion due to different viewer notions?…

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A Missing Person in Sri Lanka: Heartfelt Issues & Ground Realities

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Image courtesy Salon / AP Photo by Eranga Jayawardena When I was in Sri Lanka from mid-April to early June 2009 I was on holiday with my wife and not able to pursue investigations in any depth. In contrast my sojourn in May-June 2010 focused on a range of studies and travels. One gem of a life-story surfaced near my second home in Wellawatte when I was able to chat with a domestic servant at a Tamil house nearby, a lady who had been through the crucible of Eelam War in the Vanni Pocket. I shall call her Sambandhi. She was a wizened wiry soul who had survived the war together with husband, but (1) had one daughter killed by shrapnel; (2) one son (who was then aged c. 21) hospitalized in mid-2009 with the loss of one eye and injuries to face and other eye;[i] and (3) was wracked with pain because one of her sons had been conscripted…

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Interview with Nimalka Fernando: The UN HRC resolution and beyond

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Nimalka, now we’ve seen that the council voted for the resolution on Sri Lanka. What is your initial impression? It’s a serious voting pattern. Because if you look at the resolution, the resolution has very substantial  concerns raised by civil society for a period of time. From holding elections in the North, addressing issues of impunity, collapse of rule of law, the unaddressed issues of accountability, the failure of Sri Lankan Government to address issues of reconciliation for a long time, and also the selective manner in which the LLRC action plan has been constructed and also the inadequacies in the national human rights action plan. So if you take all those subjects one by one, if you look at the voting pattern one by one, I feel very serious in terms of the resolution. If you take for instance the statement made by Thailand; Thailand voted against the resolution. But Thailand made a very significant statement calling on to…

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UN HRC 22nd Session | Resolution ‘Promoting reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka’

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An archive of material around the Resolution titled ‘Promoting reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka’ passed at the UN Human Rights Council today. Final text below, and available as PDF here, and as Word document here. ### Human Rights Council Twenty-second session Agenda item 2 Annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and reports of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Secretary-General Austria, Belgium*, Bulgaria*, Canada*, Croatia*, Denmark*, Estonia, Finland*, France*, Georgia*, Germany, Greece*, Hungary*, Iceland*, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein*, Lithuania*, Malta*, Monaco*, Montenegro, Norway*, Poland, Portugal*, Romania, Saint Kitts and Nevis*, Slovakia*, Slovenia*, Spain, Sweden*, Switzerland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland*, United States of America: draft resolution 22/… Promoting reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka The Human Rights Council, Reaffirming the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, Guided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants on Human Rights and other relevant instruments, Bearing in…

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Sons and daughters missing, missed, forgotten: LLRC’s failure in Sri Lanka

"My daughter has been missing since 15th of May 2009 from Valaijarmadam" ~ Vasanthathevi Kathirkamanathan from Ananthapuram, Puthukkudiyiruppu in Mullaithivu District

Tamil mothers, sisters, wives and daughters have not yet given up their hopes to find their disappeared sons, brothers, husbands and fathers. The tragedy of endless search continues for them. Some Tamil women have more than one tragedy to digest. Vasanthathevi Kathirkamanathan is still searching for her missing daughter. And, her husband has been missing since May 2009. “I don’t know whether he is alive or dead. My relatives want me to believe that he was hit by a shell during the heavy fighting in May 2009, and died on the spot. But, he was with me till the last moment on 18th May 2009. If he was hit by a shell, and died on the spot, I must have seen his dead body. Since, I have not seen his dead body, I am unable to believe that he was killed. I strongly feel he was made to disappear. My life is in limbo” says tearful Vasanthathevi Kathirkamanathan from Ananthapuram,…

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Police detains families of disappeared from Northern Sri Lanka and prevents peaceful protest and petition to the UN

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[Editors note: See our earlier report, Police impeding the movement of Tamils.] March 5th, 2013, Vavuniya On March 5th, 2013, at about 8.30pm, the Police blocked about 600 persons, comprising families of the disappeared and civil society activists from the North, from traveling from Vavuniya to Colombo to attend a protest organized by the ‘Association of the Families Searching for the Disappeared Relatives’ the following day (6th). Following the protest at Viharamaha Devi Park, in Colombo, the families had planned to march to the UN office in Colombo and hand over a petition. This protest was meant to be part of a larger campaign organized by the families of the disappeared to know the truth about their loved ones, and to lobby the international community to intervene on their behalf by calling on the Sri Lankan Government to provide them with truth, justice and accountability. As a result of this obstruction however, the planned protest could not be held. People had…

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Police impeding the movement of Tamils

11.14PM, 5th March 2013: Families of the disappeared in Sri Lanka, traveling to attend a demonstration in front of Colombo UN office, were detained in Vavuniya by the Police. Eleven buses with victimised Tamil people were en route to Colombo to stage a demonstration in Colombo tomorrow to coincide with the submission of the US resolution on Sri Lanka at the UN human rights Council. All the eleven buses and a total of around 700 individuals were hindered in their progress. The bus drivers were questioned by TID and CID members. This evening, when they tried to pass Omanthai check post after all the security procedures were completed, a special Police escort came and took them to Vavuniya. At present, all the families are being kept under heavy military presence amid heavy rain in Vavuniya’s Urban Council Ground. A short whole ago some unidentified people in civilian dress tried to infiltrate the crowed in an attempt to trouble them. 9.21am,…

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Lies, Damn Lies and Mahinda Samarasinghe at the UN HRC

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Image courtesy JDS Sri Lanka Campaign has just released a very good compilation of rebuttals to points made by Min Mahinda Samarasinghe’s address to the UN Human Rights Council yesterday, which can be read and viewed here. Here Sri Lankan civil society responding to Mahinda Samarasinghe’s speech @groundviews @cfhaviland #HRC22 #UNlk scribd.com/fullscreen/127… — Sri Lanka Campaign (@SLcampaign) February 28, 2013 In addition to the content, the production of this document, and its publication online, is itself an interesting development which flags the growing influence of web and social media in countering the wily terminological inexactitudes of the Rajapakse regime and its leading apologists. Civil Society Collective by Repost This Article

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“Building the base”: An interview with Sunila Abeysekara about post-war Sri Lanka

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Sunila, how do you look at Sri Lanka today?  There are different interpretations ranging from a constitutional dictatorship to clan- run ‘deep state’? And you have decades of human rights activism behind you; you have been to the Geneva Human Rights council for nearly a decade to campaign for rights in Sri Lanka, but today Geneva has become the “f word” in dominant political discourse in Sri Lanka? Why?  Indeed it is true to say that President Rajapaksa, his brothers and son and nephews, whatever you know, they constitute a block, a family block that actually controls the political and economic future of our country at this moment. So definitely it is not a democracy. Definitely what has happened in the past months have shown us that there is no rule of law and the constituent features of any democracy; the independence of judiciary, the freedom of the press, all these, do not exist in Sri Lanka. So, at least…

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About Groundviews

Located at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Groundviews is a citizen journalism website that uses a range of genres and media to highlight critical perspectives on governance, reconciliation, human rights, the arts and literature, democracy and other issues. The site has won two international awards, including the prestigious Manthan Award South Asia in 2009. The grand jury's evaluation of the site noted, "What no media dares to report, Groundviews publicly exposes. It's a new age media for a new Sri Lanka... Free media at it's very best!"

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