Archive for the ‘War Crimes’

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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The empty findings of Sri Lanka’s Military Court of Inquiry

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Image courtesy RNW Colombo’s contempt for the international community seems to be increasing. The recent media release on the findings of the Military Court of Inquiry stretch credibility. While I have not had access to the full report and to the evidence presented to the Military Court of Inquiry, I am shocked by the Court of Inquiry’s findings. I was a member of the The Panel of Experts appointed by the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, to look into accountabilty for the final stages of the war. The Panel rejected with utter certainty the notion that the Sri Lankan Military mounted a “humanitarian rescue” and that the war was conducted with “zero civilian casualties”. The Panel’s work revealed “a very different version of the final stages of the war than that maintained to this day by the Government of Sri Lanka“. The panel found “credible allegations” which, if proven, indicated that war crimes and crimes against humanity were…

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Impeachment of Sri Lanka’s Chief Justice and its impact: Poll results

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Photo courtesy Euronews From 6 – 21 March 2013, Groundviews ran an online poll to ascertain opinions on the lasting impact of the unprecedented impeachment of Sri Lanka’s Chief Justice. The online poll was hosted on Typeform.com. 177 responses were generated. The questionnaire can be downloaded as a PDF here. The full poll results, for statistical analysis and verification, can be downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet here. Excerpts to the answers given to Question 1 and 7 are reproduced below, which some language edits. Unedited responses to these questions can be downloaded as plain text files (Question 1 and Question 7). Select quotes from the responses generated by Question 9 are also embedded in the infographic below. Unedited responses to this question are included in the Excel spreadsheet above. Clicking on the heading of any chart will take you to infogr.am and allow you to share and embed the specific infographic across a range of leading social media sites and…

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Another US Resolution on Sri Lanka: The Road to Nowhere?

Mahinda-Samarasinghe

Photo courtesy JDS So it looks like the US will bring another resolution on Sri Lanka at the next session of the UN’s Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva this March. Quite frankly – I am shocked. US foreign policy as it relates to Sri Lanka has been confusing and is replete with complications and contradictions. One can’t help but wonder: Where is all of this heading? Is this a road to nowhere? I really wish I knew. But at this point, I’m not sure that anybody does. If the US goes ahead with another (weak) resolution, what would be the point? It would accomplish nothing. And what does that mean for US foreign policy in Sri Lanka, or – more broadly – what might that mean for American foreign policy in the region? The US didn’t seem to be that concerned about human rights here when people were being slaughtered in 2009. Make no mistake about it: Washington knew…

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Still Counting the Dead: A welcome first step

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Still Counting the Dead: Survivors of Sri Lanka’s Hidden War, by Frances Harrison, Portobello Books, 246 pp, £ 14.99 “We used to be a very proud people”1 – Uma, The Teacher I Few years ago, during a very wintery January weekend, at a Copenhagen hotel, I was scrambling to prepare a last minute Power Point presentation for a conference themed, violent conflict and health. The reason was one of the Mullivaaykkaal survivors had agreed to speak at the conference’s public symposium as an eyewitness of Vanni war (witnesses from Iraq and South Sudan also spoke at the symposium). The presentation was meant to aid the witness while speaking at the symposium. I was planning for a very brief video or photographic presentation followed by few slides with texts, therefore I was looking for pictures and videos both in my computer and online. Suddenly I remembered about this particular video, which I watched back in May 2009. I managed to get the…

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The ICG Report on Tamil Politics and the Quest for a Political Solution: The Blind Spot

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Image courtesy ICG Facebook page The recently released report “Sri Lanka: Tamil Politics and the Quest for a Political Solution” by the International Crisis Group [ICG] is a timely contribution to the international community’s understanding of current Tamil politics, and reiterates a number of useful recommendations for all parties concerned. Its prescient analysis of the prevailing tensions within Tamil politics; its recounting of the failure on the part of the government to reciprocate the Tamil National Alliance’s reasonable demands; and its description of the military juggernaut unleashed in the North and East of the country point to the urgent nature of the problem at hand. Yet, the ICG sound caution where caution is due, urging Tamil leaders to speak directly to the Sinhala and Muslims people and find common cause with them. These are good, meaningful and sensible observations. Despite the unfortunate timing of the release, which coincided with the impeachment saga, the report will eagerly be read by Sri…

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Howling

What shall I do, living in Peru, with this report of systemic failure in U.N. monitoring in Sri Lanka, how bureaucrats drove away from the disaster to come, buried hard- earned stats about civilian deaths and allowed themselves to be brow-beaten, harassed, shouted into silence while 40,000 humans died , mostly from battering shells rained from fighter jets? I belong to the family of nations. I have a vote in one democracy, dream of serving humanity, in the Secretariat of the United Nations. of inside influence, reform within, extracting the worm, of keeping a job close to the Secretary General, speaking into his ear, saying fix your flank, Man. Souls are howling. Repost This Article

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The end of war in Sri Lanka, captured for posterity by Google Earth

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When in early 2009, UNOSAT released satellite imagery of what later turned out to be the final weeks of Sri Lanka’s 27-year old war with the LTTE, the images were met with vehement Government condemnation, and counter-analysis by the Ministry of Defence. During this heady, hellish time, the subject of The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lankan & The Last Days of the Tamil Tigers by former UN spokesman Gordon Weiss and the recently released Still Counting the Dead: Survivors of Sri Lanka’s Hidden War by the former BBC correspondent Frances Harrison, while the President assured Sri Lankans and the world that heavy weapons weren’t being used, the satellite images from UNOSAT added to the confusion, showing clear and widespread indications of heavy shelling. The question then became when the shelling occurred. From the report by the UN Panel of Experts, appointed by the UN Secretary General to the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report, the trading of allegations…

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LLRC roadmap: An ‘action plan’ to suit the US, not us!

Sri Lanka's President Rajapaksa attends the Executive Session III at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth

Photo credit: Daily FT The government announced (26 July, 2012) it has drawn up a comprehensive “National Action Plan to Implement the Recommendations of the LLRC” and has released same to the public domain. This comes after the Geneva Resolution and the discussions the Rajapaksa government had thereafter with the US administration. Immediately after the Geneva Resolution was adopted in March 2012, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton extended an invitation to External Affairs Minister Peiris, for a discussion in Washington that was accepted by Minister Peiris. Summing up the meeting Minister Peiris had with Secretary Clinton, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told the media on Friday 18 May 2012, “The Sri Lankan Foreign Minister presented a very serious and comprehensive approach to the Lesson Learnt and Reconciliation Commission’s implementation”. Secretary Clinton was quoted saying, the (SL) presidential secretariat’s programme is an, “excellent mechanism for implementing the LLRC’s recommendations”. The Rajapaksa government nevertheless tried it’s best, to tell the Sinhala gallery that it…

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Interview with Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga: Governance and politics today, future plans and prospects

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On 25th July, Groundviews met with former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga in Colombo to get her views on Sri Lanka’s present state of governance, plus a range of other issues, including – as is often today hinted at – the chances of re-entering active politics. This is the first in-depth interview she has given any media in over six and a half years since she left office. We talked for close upon two hours. The podcast is edited for length and content. Approximate time codes are provided when questions are posed or when particularly important points are made by the former President. This brief write-up is by no means a comprehensive account of what she says and readers are strongly encouraged to listen to the podcast in full, which you can download as an audio file here (plays in iTunes, Quicktime or VLC). 2.14:What are you doing these days? At around 4:40 she talks about the South Asia Policy and Research Institute [SAPRI] and…

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3rd Anniversary Reflections: Geneva, May 2009

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Photo courtesy UN May is the month of the diplomatic success of Sri Lanka and its friends at the Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in 2009. That battle and victory are now the target of criticism and historical revisionism. It is alleged that Sri Lanka was brought onto the HRC agenda by our success, that the Sri Lankan team in Geneva at the time should have kept the resolution off the agenda as had our counterparts in New York, that the success of 2009 was the progenitor of an inevitable setback of March 2012 in the same arena, and that if we are in a hole today, we dug that hole in 2009. This criticism, whispered and murmured since 2009 and finally out in the public domain, has the dubious virtue of being entirely ‘home grown’, because nothing remotely along these lines has figured in the voluminous commentary on the May 2009 and March 2012…

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Cluster bombs in Sri Lanka: From denial to discovery

Sudar Oli - 06.03.2012

Ravi Nessman from Associated Press has broken what’s perhaps the most important story on the war, since it ended three years ago. In a story published by AP a few hours ago, he notes, The Associated Press obtained a copy Thursday of an email written by a U.N. land mine expert that said unexploded cluster bomblets were discovered in the Puthukudiyiruppu area of northern Sri Lanka, where a boy was killed last month and his sister injured as they tried to pry apart an explosive device they had found to sell for scrap metal. The email was written by Allan Poston, the technical adviser for the U.N. Development Program’s mine action group in Sri Lanka. “After reviewing additional photographs from the investigation teams, I have determined that there are cluster sub-munitions in the area where the children were collecting scrap metal and in the house where the accident occurred. This is the first time that there has been confirmed unexploded…

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Ask Ass. Sec. Robert Blake a question on Sri Lanka over Twitter

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Image courtesy Colombo Page Robert Blake is the Assistant Secretary, South And Central Asian Affairs at the US State Department and former Ambassador to Sri Lanka. The man likes cricket and our own Murali, and given his current portfolio, is a key figure in US-Sri Lanka relations post-war. He is currently taking questions on Twitter on US relations with South Asia. https://twitter.com/usembsl/status/192098700833726465 Through the hashtag #AskSCA, there are already a number of questions from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, but very few from Sri Lanka. We have posed four, based on the US Senate’s Committee On Foreign Relations report on Sri Lanka (SRI LANKA: RECHARTING U.S. STRATEGY AFTER THE WAR), published in December 2009, which has a number of important recommendations we’ve not heard about since. https://twitter.com/groundviews/status/192447985777520643 https://twitter.com/groundviews/status/192447995483140096 https://twitter.com/groundviews/status/192448006493192193 https://twitter.com/groundviews/status/192448015359934465 In addition to ours, @Apelankawe and @thrishantha have posed some interesting questions. https://twitter.com/thrishantha/status/190067440342933506 https://twitter.com/apelankawe/status/191882256841846786 https://twitter.com/apelankawe/status/191883208256790531 Till now, not a single mainstream media Twitter account in Sri Lanka, or even full time…

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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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The Geneva II debacle

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Photo courtesy Vikalpa, from protest against US resolution in Colombo, 27 February 2012 The US-sponsored resolution at the UNHRC had to be defeated. It was not. 24 in favour, 15 against, 8 abstained. Hearts are broken, glasses are shattered, the ‘gods’ have ignored our prayers, there is madness surrounding us; 2012, we are now sure, is when the world comes to an end. But that was yesterday. Today, the morning after, is once again cold; we need to pick up the pieces, mend our hearts, move on. And there are questions too: what is this resolution? How did we perform? Is it all India’s fault? Where did we go wrong? Are we to be blamed? What now? Resolution L.2: From US, with love The resolution titled ‘Promoting reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka’ has, during the process of the UNHRC session, undergone considerable change. From being an intrusive and arrogant one sponsored by the US, it now appears rather soft,…

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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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