Archive for the ‘Post-War’

Latest victims of a heinous trend: Abduction of political activists Premakumar Gunaratnam and Dimuthu Attygalle

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Political activists and leaders of the People’s Struggle Movement in Sri Lanka, Mr. Premakumar Gunaratnam[1] and Ms. Dimithu Attygalle[2] disappeared on 6th April 2012.  Prior to their disappearance both activists had been preparing for the first convention of the Frontline Socialist Party, a party formed by a dissident group from the opposition party, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP – meaning People’s Liberation FRont). FSP party members had received credible information that both activists were under intense Government surveillance, shortly before their disappearance. There is currently no information regarding their fate or whereabouts. Mr. Gunaratnam was a key leader of the People’s Struggle Movement (PSM) and Ms. Attygalle was the Secretary for Women’s and International affairs of the organization, which was a forerunner to the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP). Mr. Gunaratnam had been  instrumental in forming the FSP which was due to be launched officially on 9th April 2012 and he was expected to be appointed as its head.  The PSM has…

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Menik Farm after the cyclone: The continuing misery of IDPs

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After a punishingly hot day, the skies seemed to provide some relief to the residents of Chettikulam as they opened to release heavy showers during the early evening of Saturday, March 31st. However, what was welcomed as a break from the unending heat by those ensconced in sturdy houses simultaneously proved to be a torment for the 6,022[1] residents in the Menik Farm IDP camps a few kilometres outside of town. Reports of injuries and the destruction of homes in the camps started coming in shortly after the 30 minute shower dissipated. We rushed to the Chettikulam hospital in the Vavuniya district and were greeted with the sight of ambulance after ambulance pulling in, unloading an unfortunate array of patients: an elderly man too weak to walk who has to be taken in with a wheelchair, another woman in a blue nightgown with two young children and another who has been cut on the head. She told us that the…

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The rape of a 13 year old and paramilitary presence in Jaffna

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March 3, 2012 marked a very dark ebb in our society as it saw the horrific rape and murder of little Jesudasan Lakshini (13), allegedly at the hands of former EPDP cadre, Kanthasami Jegatheswaran (alias Kiruba) (31), from the Delft Island, Jaffna. Currently being held in remand at the Jaffna Remand Prison, the accused was produced before the Kayts Magistrate this week (30). However, the hearing was further postponed to April 9, 2012, as the Delft Police had failed to conclude their compilation of eye witness statements, said attorney-at-law K.S. Ratnavel, who is appearing on behalf of the victim’s family. The pending statement is the last of four eye witness statements attesting to having witnessed Lakshini being intercepted and taken by the accused on her way to the market, he added. This raises the glaring question as to why the Police was unable to obtain a mere four eye witness statements in the course of almost a month following this…

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Fishing in Turbulent Waters

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Introduction Newly initiated development projects in the Northern and Eastern Provinces in post-war Sri Lanka are expected to open new avenues towards ethnic reconciliation, as proclaimed not only by government media but also by the mainstream development scholarship. However, this popular perception about opening up new avenues for reconciliation through development seems to foreclose certain barriers and obstructions existing within the so called development highway itself, especially with regard to ethnic minorities. To understand the possible political and other forms of repercussion of the currently existing development-community encounter, one should turn one’s ears not only to the subject-agents of the development discourse but also to those who are subjected to the development industry, considering the fact that the subalterns also are involved in creating meanings (or counter-articulate the dominant discourse, as Laclauian discourse analysts would suggest) in their own way. This piece explores the ways in which the local communities in the Northern fishing villages receive the messages enunciated by…

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In conversation with Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu: The resolution in Geneva and its discontents

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Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu is the Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, the institutional anchor of Groundviews. He is today one of three human rights defenders senior government ministers consider traitors and would like to, as in ancient times, kill, and, inter alia, break the limbs of. Though Sri Lanka’s foreign minister distanced himself from these remarks, the President and his brother, the all-powerful Secretary of Defence, have not expressed a single word of condemnation, or distanced themselves from the minister’s comments, who has openly and repeatedly said he derives his legitimacy from the Rajapaksa’s. Much of this hate and harm directed against Dr. Saravanamuttu and other key human rights defenders of late has been on account of their participation at the recently concluded 19th Session of the UN Human Rights Council, and in particular, supporting a US sponsored resolution on Sri Lanka. There hasn’t been much informed debate and discussion within Sri Lanka on the contents and genesis…

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Defending the Country

They cry foul in that cauldron of a news room, saying these human rights defenders are traitors, publishing their names and photographs, inciting fears of death squads preparing to drive white vans to their residences. The warning by the UN Human Rights Commissioner to protect witnesses is welcome, quixotic. How will her office stop disappearances when government has rejected the resolution, said it will push back reconciliation, which I presume to mean more islanders vanished, bloodshed, people living in fear and loathing, keeping quiet or moving out, accompanied to the airport by diplomats from a friendly mission, leaving their homes to caretakers, a new life abroad for champions of human rights at home? And for those who stay, negotiating protections, waiting for a post- midnight call by an elite team of assassins, like the ones who shot prisoners at Nandikadal, stopping motorbikes in the intersection to beat Lasantha to death, dressed in black with black glasses, or as drivers of…

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Geneva 2012: The signs missed, lessons unlearnt

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Photo courtesy JDS Let’s learn the right lessons from the Geneva outcome, not the wrong ones. It is not the case that a small country such as Sri Lanka cannot fight a diplomatic battle with the mighty USA and win.  Minutes after the Sri Lanka vote at the HRC this time, the Cubans moved a resolution on the composition of the staff of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the opacity (code-named independence) of which the West regards as a holy of holies. The USA opposed the resolution. The Cuban resolution won with a massive 33 votes. Last year the USA invested far more effort and political capital at a far higher political level than in the case of the Sri Lanka resolution in Geneva, to prevent Palestine from being granted full membership of the UNESCO in Paris. The US lost that battle, and besieged Palestine, an embryonic or proto-state (unlike Sri Lanka) won a two…

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WHOSE MOVE IS IT ANYWAY?

Image from www.dbsjeyaraj.com. Photo by Jean-Marc Ferré

  The passage of the United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution on Sri Lanka raises a fundamental question: what next? When the dust settles and tempers calm, all parties concerned will be faced with the actuality that things have changed quite dramatically. This piece attempts to identify the challenges and opportunities presented by the passage of the Resolution to a number of political entities or individuals. Sri Lankan government The Sri Lankan government now faces an awkward situation. Having lost more than one half of the entire membership of the Council including almost all of Latin America, and given the exhortations from even sympathetic members that it should implement the recommendations of the LLRC, the options at the Rajapaksas’ disposal have narrowed. What is clear is that twelve more months of slow or no progress on key issues of demilitarization, devolution, disarming paramilitaries, democracy and accountability will only isolate Sri Lanka further, and augment the likelihood of an international investigation…

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After the UNHRC Resolution Vote: Don’t Hold Your Breath for Truth, Justice or Reconciliation

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Photo courtesy JDS/Guy Calaf, Agence France-Presse​ By the time this article is published, the votes on the hotly-contested UN Human Rights Council resolution on Sri Lanka will have been cast and counted.  I am writing this as the debate over the resolutions is taking place in Geneva, and I find myself wondering if the outcome will be meaningful for the lives of hundreds of thousands of victims of our 30 year war.  Don’t get me wrong – I recognise the significance of the UNHRC resolution in terms of its moral and political symbolism, and that it may have profound implications for the Sri Lankan state’s position within the field of geopolitics and international relations.  I know that it will very likely impact the course of Sri Lanka’s national politics – even if I can’t anticipate the precise consequences.  Whilst I’d like to hope that the outcome of the UNHRC vote could lead to the harm and hurts of decades of…

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Counter-productive propaganda and human rights in Sri Lanka

JOINT STATEMENT - Sunila Abeysekara, Nimalka Fernando and Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu

As the three Sri Lankan human rights defenders who have come most under attack by the state media in Sri Lanka in the past week, because of our active involvement with the on-going session of the UN Human rights Council in Geneva, we feel compelled to issue this statement of clarification. We do not deny that we are critical of the conduct of the government of Sri Lanka, and the institutions and agencies under its control, whenever disregard for the human rights obligations imposed on the government by virtue of its being signatory to almost all international human rights conventions comes to our attention. As the President of Sri Lanka, and his Special Envoy on Human Rights well know, the three of us have offered our services to this government to ensure human rights accountability in the past. For example, all of us served on the National Advisory Council appointed by Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, when he held the portfolio for…

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Choosing What to Believe

Photo courtesy Reuters/Dinuka Liyanawatte

Photo courtesy of Reuters/Dinuka Liyanawatte [Editors' note: The article below was sent to us by a regular contributor to the site whose name we have redacted due to security considerations.] With the airing of Channel 4’s new film, Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished, a follow-up to their first one Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields first broadcast nearly a year ago, there is bound to be a renewed interest in the matter of alleged war-crimes concerning the Sri Lankan Government. Because, let’s face it: Channel 4’s first video came and went, and while there were about two weeks of discussion around it, mostly everyone eventually forgot about it. Now, with the emergence of the new film and its alarming new footage, released in time with the Human Rights Council meetings in Geneva, we are forced to remember what we forgot then: That it is undeniable that Tamil civilians were maimed and killed during the last stages of the war, despite…

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A question Sri Lanka’s leaders keep dodging: Where are the disappeared?

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Photo courtesy Avaaz I’d been in Sri Lanka just three weeks when I first heard of someone disappearing. It was May 2009 and I got an anonymous email telling me that Stephen Sunthararaj, a human rights worker from northern Sri Lanka, had been abducted at gunpoint and taken away in a white van in the heart of Colombo. He had previously been detained by the police – on suspicion of what, it is not clear – then released for lack of incriminating evidence just before his abduction. I tried to contact one or two ministers, I think, but didn’t get through and my work once more turned to the war then still raging in the north. I bitterly regretted not following up the case. Months later I met a Westerner who had known Stephen Sunthararaj. At the mention of him at dinner, he wept. Fast forward to this year. Five weeks ago Ramasamy Prabagaran, a businessman and, like Stephen, a…

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India’s Volte-Face: Winners and Losers

Image courtesy LankaStandard

  India’s hasty decision to support the United States of America led Resolution on Sri Lanka came as a big surprise. While a few rumours flagged the possibility of an India “for” vote a couple of days before the actual announcement by the Prime Minister, they were largely ignored. The prevailing orthodoxy was that India would likely abstain, and that the vote would carry with a narrow majority. That orthodoxy has now been questioned, and with India coming on board, the possibility of a landslide victory for the US is more likely. This brief piece sets out to identify the political “winners” and “losers” from the fallout of India’s decision, barring last minute twists in the tale. The merits of the Resolution are not discussed in this article. Its aspirations are rather more modest, and only seeks to identify the manner in which coming events will contribute to the image of specific political personalities and entities. Winners The United States…

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Sri Lanka and the UNHRC: Implications for India and for Human Rights

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Image courtesy India Ink blog by New York Times/Rajanish Kakade, Associated Press As the 19th session of the Human Rights Council progresses, the discourse on Sri Lanka with reference to Human Rights is reaching its annual climax. It is annual in the sense that it has been reaching the said level of climax each year ever since the United Nations Human Rights Commission took up the issue after the completion of war in Sri Lanka. In the first two sessions Sri Lanka managed to defeat the Resolutions forwarded by the Western countries with the support of its allies from various quarters of the world, most prominently from China and Russia. India, a part of Sri Lanka’s support system, continued to assist Sri Lanka beyond the platform of the UNHRC despite the opposition from its South Indian Tamil constituency[1].  However, India’s silence amidst the mounting protests by Tamil Nadu MPs has created sense of uncertainty for Sri Lanka which is more…

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What is the bigger lie? US resolution in Geneva or number of people in Vanni in 2009?

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Image from Wikimedia Commons “One of the rankest untruths in the public domain today is that the US resolution is innocuous and unobjectionable…” said Amb. Dayan Jayatilleka in his article THE BIG LIE ABOUT THE US RESOLUTION on 16th March 2012. It would be pertinent to question whether a bigger untruth in the public domain since 2009 is about the population in Vanni in 2009. Correct me if I’m wrong – but from my memory, Amb. Jayatilleke was a party to this lie, helped cover it up – and never offered an explanation even afterwards. Population in LTTE controlled Vanni On 30th Jan. 2009, according to official government website: 75,000 – 100,000 people (high side!) (See here) On 26th Feb. 2009 according to government website, quoting the Defense Secretary – 70,000 people (See here) Now let us compare above with what is stated in Government’s version of events in last few months of the war – “Humanitarian Operation Factual Analysis” available here -…

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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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