The state of Human Rights in Sri Lanka

Prof Rajiva Wijesinha
Secretary General
Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process

26 March 2008

Since Sri Lanka is to be subject in a few weeks to the Universal Periodic Review of the United Nations Human Rights Council, it has been the subject of a spate of attacks by many organizations with interests in this subject. Though many of them repeat the same points, with more or less exaggeration and unwarranted generalization, it is sadly necessary to respond in detail to as many of them as possible. This paper will address the issues put forward by the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum. Sadly its confrontational approach, beginning in the very first paragraph with a sectarian characterization of the current government that insinuates it is not concerned about all Sri Lankan citizens, suggests that its assertions should be treated with care.

1. Failure by the State to address the grievances of minorities

The second paragraph asserts that, following the abrogation of the Ceasefire and the subsequent pulling out of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, there has been a marked increase in the terrorizing of Tamil and Muslim communities. This smacks of wishful thinking, in a context in which repeated terrorist attacks have led to the deaths of dozens of Sinhalese civilians, though in at least one case a Tamil schoolboy was killed along with his Sinhalese mates when they were victims of a suicide bomber at a railway station.

Though the Government has continued with its struggle against terror, civilian casualties have been minimal, as was the case during its campaign to liberate the Eastern Province from terrorists. The reports of the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission makes it clear that, except in the case of one incident, and another single individual, there were no civilian casualties at all during military operations.

The massive publicity given to that one incident, which occurred after firing based on mortar locating radar, makes it clear that any civilian casualties would be highlighted. The relative paucity of such media campaigns, despite the ongoing struggle in the North, makes clear the caution exercised by the military with regard to all Sri Lankan civilians, whether Muslim or Tamil or Sinhala.

SLDF goes on to criticize the LTTE in its third paragraph but then claims that historically ‘the state has failed to protect the minorities from armed non-state forces such as the LTTE and the Karuna faction’. In such a context SLDF, if it is sincere in its criticism of the LTTE, should be glad that at last Sri Lanka has a government which is willing to take on the LTTE, and ensure that the terrorism SLDF attacks is crushed. At the same time no credit is given for the manner in which the Karuna faction, consisting of many individuals brutalized from childhood by LTTE practices, have now been brought into the political mainstream and are participating in electoral politics, something the LTTE always eschewed. Reclaiming former terrorists is not easy, but the task is now proceeding much more smoothly, with Karuna himself being in Britain whilst leadership has passed to a younger generation which may be more easily brought into a pluralistic process.

In this context it is also preposterous that SLDF does not accept that the government, in expediting immediate political reforms, has made clear that it agrees with SLDF about a political solution to the problem of the minorities. This, as SLDF recommends, has been attempted through significant changes to the current system of extreme centralization of power. SLDF has in parallel pronouncements blindly followed the assertions of parties supportive of the LTTE and its claim to be the sole representatives of the Tamil people, that the APRC proposals are inadequate and an imposition by the President. The fact that 13 of the 14 parties participating in the APRC signed the proposals, and that all Tamil and Muslim parties freely engaging in democratic politics have supported these, evidently means nothing to an organization that claims to be a forum for democracy.

Arguments regarding the positive nature of these proposals are available elsewhere, but meanwhile it is absurd that the SLDF does not realize that these proposals will ensure the ‘substantial devolution of power to the regions’ that it advocates, and that such power will be available to areas in the North and East, that have not had elected representatives exercising any powers in those provinces for several years.

With regard to the SLDF concern about ‘significant power sharing at the centre, which would empower minorities at not just the regional level but also at the national level’, this is a general concern, but it should be noted that, while other minority parties were willing to engage in discussions about a second chamber based on regions, the TNA, the surrogate of the LTTE, declared that such discussions were meaningless except in terms of a final settlement with regard to devolution – which, going on past history, means an interim LTTE authoritarian administration.

2. Political killings etc

Though abuses in this area occur, SLDF notes the difficult circumstances under which the government operates, beginning with ‘the assassination of Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar by the LTTE’. Shortcomings are not targeted specifically at minorities except in terms of information that must be acted upon in the context of terrorism, as to which precautionary measures are essential if the population at large is not to suffer. The incidents to which SLDF draws attention in Para 9 confirm the determination of the government to operate according to the law in enforcing security. In the first incident, a search operation was conducted with regard to Tamils from other parts of the country who had no reason for being in Colombo. Thousands of Tamils ordinarily resident in Colombo were not affected, nor were hundreds who could explain the rationale for being in the city though they were ordinarily resident elsewhere. However, expelling several of the rest, as done by some of the security personnel involved in the search operations, was wrong and was condemned as such by the Supreme Court, leading to prompt remedial action.

With regard to the incident in December 2007, the term detention is inappropriate for questioning in which most were released on the very day. Again it was those who could not establish the rationale for their presence who were actually detained, and most of these were released within a few days. Though the action might seem harsh, it must be seen in the context of bombs that had exploded and information received about the infiltration of the city by several suicide bombers. The ultimate responsibility of a government must be to all its citizens. Given a Supreme Court that has often found against the government, it may be assumed that generally the government does not violate fundamental rights, and that is will stand corrected when any agent does. The situation is a far cry from the days of impunity that characterized the 1980s, when in the very few instances when the Court ruled against the state the police officers concerned were promptly promoted.

3. Internal Displacement

In this section SLDF reproduces a number of canards that have been falsified by independent monitors such as those of the United Nations. Certainly much displacement occurred during military operations in the East during 2006/2007, but this was because the forces gave good notice which led to virtually no casualties. Unlike in similar situations all over the world, resettlement was prompt after the East had been cleared of the LTTE, and this was certified as such by the UNHCR report – ‘Our staff monitoring the situation on the ground say the majority of people are eager to return home, the returns are voluntary and in line with international protection standards …. UNHCR will continue to monitor the returns and report directly to the government on any problems regarding the voluntariness and any deviation from the civilian characteristics of the move’. (p 32).

Though several persons (though just about half the figure alleged) are still displaced, this is because a few areas still need to be cleared of the landmines laid by the LTTE. Only with regard to the Sampur Security Zone are alternatives required, and this is for just 10,000 persons, as opposed to the original assumptions. Alternatives within the same district have already been found.

SLDF is right to focus on the Muslims ‘”ethnically cleansed” from the Northern Province in 1990 by the LTTE’. The failure of successive governments to address this issue is a disgrace, and also testifies to the enormous influence of the LTTE, which for many years presented itself as the only organization with whom governments had to negotiate, thus forestalling firm action in this regard. The current government is determined to remedy the situation, and though many areas are still risky for return, it is hoped that soon these displaced persons will be restored safely, if they wish it, to their places of origin.

SLDF again propagates the LTTE myth that the closure of the A9 southward from Jaffna is a horrendous act of the government. That had to be closed because the LTTE, disguised as civilians, launched attacks on troop forward lines, in gross violation of the Ceasefire. No government can permit such risks to be repeated. However, despite attacks on shipping by the LTTE (including on a vessel carrying SLMM monitors), and a refusal to provide guarantees to the ICRC so that food ships could proceed safely (as SLDF reports), the government has ensured steady supplies to Jaffna. The last report of the UNHCR on Jaffna Welfare Centres testifies that most items, and all essentials, are not only available but also affordable.

Another canard relates to free movement southward. Earlier the LTTE had tried to suggest that the government was restricting this, but in fact it was the LTTE that had refused earlier to give guarantees to keep the checkpoint open all week. Though as SLDF notes the LTTE has tried to prevent civilians ‘from fleeing areas where there are military attacks, with the aim of using them as human shields’,it is apparent that now the LTTE’s reign of terror is ending, and that the people of areas still under LTTE control are asserting themselves more and more, albeit only gradually.

4. Right to reparations and remedies and lack of prosecutions of violations

SLDF begins by noting the problems in this respect caused by the LTTE, but after half a paragraph about these it has seven and a half that are critical of the government. Certainly prosecutions in Sri Lanka are slow, but this is a problem, if not a fault, derived from the system of justice that it has inherited from the British. Without making odious comparisons, we must realize that slowness in what is often considered a model of justice, and what seems comparative impunity, as in the Abu Ghraib cases, are part and parcel of a system that insists on particular procedures and high standards of proof before conviction.

Sri Lanka also has problems of capacity and technical skill, as have been pointed out by a Scotland Yard review that was commissioned by the government with regard to a particularly worrying case, that of the MP Mr Raviraj. In that case the Yard commended what the police had done with what was available. It should be noted that, in this case, identified suspects, though initially thought to be associated with a political party in government, have fled to territory controlled by the LTTE.

To make up for worries with regard to several well-publicized cases, the government has instituted a Special Commission of Inquiry, with observation by an Independent International Group of Eminent Persons. Though some of the prestige attached to this group has been vitiated by the procedures adopted by their representatives on the ground, who made no secret once of wanting to issue a report in time for the meetings of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the system adopted showed that the government appreciated the difficulties and the lack of confidence that could result, and was attempting to make up for these. It should be noted that amongst the cases to be considered are the assassination of the former Foreign Minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, who was bitterly opposed by the LTTE. No one could be more anxious than the government to bring the culprits to book in this instance, but the failure to solve the case has to be endured.

Comments on the cultural insensitivity etc of the police are understandable given that, though applications have always been called from all citizens of the country, for various reasons, including diffidence caused by previous language policies, very few Tamils have joined in the recent past. More recently, there have been fears amongst Tamils, given the terrorist approach that Tamils serving in security forces were specifically to be targets of attack, being denigrated as traitors.

Precisely for this reason, the government has begun a practice that successive governments in the past did not think of, which is recruitment specifically of Tamils. The first batch of these, dedicated to service in the predominantly Tamil speaking Eastern Province, passed out last month, and recruitment of several more is planned. Concerted efforts in language teaching have also commenced, at all levels of all the security forces.

5. National Institutions

The assertion of SLDF that authoritarianism is on the rise suggests complete ignorance of the current situation as well as of the sufferings of the past. First and foremost, the country has independent courts which have not hesitated to give verdicts against the government, in particular with regard to human rights applications.

With regard to the national Human Rights Council, efforts of the opposition to make a political issue of the Constitutional Council, the full membership of which had not been recommended as required by the Speaker until very recently, have led to international assistance not being forthcoming to strengthen it as requested, despite a UNDP Stocktaking Report affirming the need for this.

The failure of Civil Society members to attend meetings of the advisory committee set up by the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights confirms what government has begun to worry about, that concerns are expressed more to obtain publicity than with a genuine will to correct things. Clearly the government will have to proceed with reforms on its own, but this it has now planned to do, with a revitalization of advisory institutions, in particular regional ones, through strengthened civil military liaison in key areas.

The categorical assertions regarding engagement with international actors also seem self-contradictory. The continuing stress on Sir John Holmes’ comments on the country being a dangerous place for aid workers ignores his acknowledgment that that comment was an isolated remark, and also that it was based on a single incident which needs further inquiry. He has failed to respond still to the point that the agency concerned had not acted according to UN principles in unnecessarily exposing local employees to a dangerous situation without the safeguards expected, at a time when all other agencies were evacuating staff.

Criticism of the government in this respect is based on the response of a single Minister which the government made clear did not represent the government position. However, until very recently, when employees of the UN make untoward remarks that do not represent the UN position, no apologies or corrections have been offered. This situation has now changed, with a new set of senior UN officials in place, which will help to avoid the impression of association with oppositional forces that previously characterized some individuals.

6. Child soldiers

The issue of child soldiers is vital, but SLDF has also fallen into the trap, first perpetrated by the LTTE, of equating the LTTE abuse of children with that of the Karuna faction. It is clear from detailed reports that this was systemic in the LTTE. Naturally the Karuna faction, which broke away from the LTTE, still has individuals who see nothing wrong with the practice, particularly in the context of the LTTE having begun to rerecruit all those disbanded by the faction soon after it split from the LTTE in 2004.

However, with a change of leadership in the Karuna faction, which has shown itself anxious to enter the democratic process, it is hoped that old habits will die and the Eastern Province at least will be cleaned of this scourge. The main problem however requires more concerted action, and the tolerance displayed by the international community, not only to defiant violation of norms but continuing forced conscription, must stop forthwith, without hiding behind a cloak of balance.

7. Freedom of Expression

The idea that freedom of expression is threatened in Sri Lanka is ridiculous, when international agencies actually provide funding to an online paper that talks about Sri Lanka as ‘a country at war and democracy that’s hostage to the whim and fancy of a President and his coterie of murderous brutes’. The amount of criticism of the state and its organs that is contained in print and electronic media would astonish anyone who had to live through the massive censorship and controls of the eighties.

There is however danger for Tamil language journalists, in particular in Jaffna, which is a legacy of the internecine warfare between the LTTE and former militants, whom it ruthlessly eliminated at the beginning of the Ceasefire period. The government is committed to stopping this phenomenon, but this has not been easy in the context of continuing action by the LTTE.

Conclusion

Certainly there are problems in Sri Lanka and the government welcomes assistance to overcome these, through training of relevant personnel, through the development of local institutions and in particular regional branches of these, through assistance with better maintenance of records.

But most useful of all would be assistance to destroy the scourge of terrorism and of forced conscription. That would allow for relaxation of restrictions that have proved essential in the face of enormous and ruthless terrorist power. Certainly no government facing such power has as good a record as the Sri Lankan government and its armed forces, and the failure to appreciate the great regard shown for civilians, as compared with what occurs in conflicts elsewhere, it most regrettable.

Prof Rajiva Wijesinha
Secretary General
Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process

Louise Arbour as a political football

Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha
Secretary General, Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process

12 October 2007
The Sri Lankan government recently invited the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Sri Lanka. The poor lady is now here, and has found herself the focus of a series of articles in which she is presented as the potential saviour of the Sri Lankan people. Her visit is presented for instance as a test for the political leadership of the country. No matter that simultaneously this claimant declares that the ‘political intellect of the country has sunk to its lowest depths…the political intellect remains in a state of stupor.’

What is this stupor? Certainly those who view the lady as a modern day St George, battling a dragon, are very clear about what the battle is about. They are sure that she will recommend a UN monitoring mission, and all their arguments are intended to ensure that that mission is established.

Whether or not Louise Arbour came here with a determination to recommend such a mission, as they have all assumed, is not relevant. Though some foot soldiers in the human rights army were already gearing up their applications for positions in that mission, the Sri Lankan government which invited her has to assume that she is adult enough to reflect on a situation she came here to observe, and to decide what recommendations may best serve the purpose she is dedicated to achieving.

What is more interesting is the motivation of those who have predetermined that such a mission is essential, and who are counting on her to promote their agenda. Foremost amongst these it would seem is the UNP, as represented by Mr Lakshman Kiriella, who not only keeps requesting such a mission but even claims that nothing can stop it if the UN recommends it. He goes so far as to claim that there would be an economic embargo from the European Union if the government tried to stop it. Sadly he has now been joined by Mr Mangala Samaraweera, who has reiterated the constant refrain of his erstwhile critics in claiming that Sri Lankan government is ‘being isolated by world’.

Then we have Mr Basil Fernando, a doughty activist in the past who had to flee the country when the UNP death squads were in their element, who compares Sri Lanka with the Nepal of 2005 and the Cambodia of 1989. The former accepted a High Commissioner’s office to ‘monitor human rights in order to deal with the conflict that existed between the authoritarian regime of the king and the Maoist rebels’. In Cambodia it was not a human rights office, it was a Transitional Authority that had in effect to run the country because of the ‘crisis as four factions were engaged in an armed struggle which led to the collapse of Cambodian society.’

But, as Aristotle put it, recalled in time by one of the Human Rights Watch activists in Geneva, the roots of injustice lie in treating like things in unlike ways and unlike things in the same way. This had clearly not occurred to the Portuguese ambassador to the UN in New York, when, talking on behalf of the United Nations, he clustered together Sri Lanka and the Sudan and Somalia and Iraq and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Portuguese ambassador in Geneva, who had engaged with the Sri Lankan Mission there along with his colleagues, was much more circumspect and laid aside the resolution he had originally indicated he had been instructed to put forward.

There is reason to suppose that he did this because of the constructive engagement pursued by the model Sri Lanka Mission in Geneva. That indeed is the policy of the government, to discuss issues openly, weigh up advice, and respond constructively. After all, we have a democratic government, elected twice as it were, in elections that have been universally accepted as fair, except for the plaintive cry of the UNP that they were deprived of the mass vote they were anticipating. Interestingly, the EU monitors for the 2004 election gave it a clear bill of health except in the North and East, which produced the 22 TNA MPs the UNP was counting on to give it a majority.

Despite such successful and we trust productive engagements, which the government continues to pursue, not only in Geneva, not only with Ms Arbour, but also with the world at large – and in particular our Asian friends who seem in Mr Samaraweera’s view no longer to constitute the world – the Human Rights army believes that there is only one way to engage, one way for Ms Arbour to react to the Sri Lankan situation, one way for the Sri Lankan government to respond. The pluralism that should be the pride of Sri Lanka socially is to be avoided in moral and intellectual activity, whether Ms Arbour’s or that of the rest of us.

What are the weapons they use to pursue their agenda? Sadly, chief amongst them is falsehood, persistent falsehood, on the Goebbellian grounds that if you lie loudly and often enough, people will believe you. So we were assured a couple of months back that there would be a EU resolution against Sri Lanka. When that did not transpire, we were told that Sri Lanka narrowly escaped censure. We were also told that Sri Lanka was saved by ‘banana republics and potty regimes’, which presumably characterizes all the countries in Asia and Africa and the Americas and the whole Non-Aligned Movement who pledged their support for Sri Lanka. Jehan Perera, normally more moderate than most of his peers, argued that the UN Human Rights Council was so myopic that it would not discuss the situation in Myanmar, his article appearing on the very day I believe that a debate on Myanmar did take place.

People of course believe what they want to believe. However it is only in Sri Lanka that such beliefs appear as responsible journalism, combined with an awesome respect for things Western, and a naïve belief that all Westerners are deeply interested in the Sri Lankan situation. Thus there was a categorical claim that the European Union Parliament was to debate the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, when in fact all that happened was that one parliamentarian set up a discussion with Human Rights Watch which attracted just one other parliamentarian. And even Basil Fernando showed his rather sad devotion to the mother country when, in citing a ridiculous article that appeared in Sri Lanka, he claimed falsely that it was from the ‘London Daily Mirror’.

Then there is emotional language. None of these characters obviously has read Orwell, and his strictures on clichés and extravagant adjectives. Basil Fernando cannot conceive of abuses, they have to be gross, a crisis must be acute, a situation must be abysmal, helplessness is utter. The adjective political is applied to lunacy, realism, intellect and disasters, plus another half dozen or so words. Dr Saravanamuttu has now decided to dwell on words such as apparatchiks and fellow travelers, and accuse the targets of his criticism of abuse and invective, whilst relishing his own use of words such as silly, myopic, callous, antediluvian, obsolete and obsession.

Does all this matter? It would not, in the ordinary world, but Sri Lanka is not ordinary. In this country relentless propaganda has contributed to change of government that nullified the wishes of the electorate. Mrs Bandaranaike was the victim of this in 1964, Mrs Kumaratunga in 2001, though she now seems to have forgotten this.
More seriously, it is not only the opposition that wants such change, or the few foreigners who, as an American recently put it, have an unhealthy nostalgia for the Wickremesinghe regime. The most concerted determination to upset the government comes from the LTTE, which has been anxiously plugging the Human Rights angle when it found that others did not work.

The tragedy is that it has so easily found followers for this. Most of them may be sincere, but they have then to be seen as at best illogical. There is for instance the influential European Union official, who was at the forefront of threats about economic sanctions, who seemed to oppose elections in the East since he had been advised that they would be controversial. His principle reason seemed to be that no remedies had been found for the strictures of the European Union monitors on the last parliamentary election.

He does not seem to have revealed the source of his advice. Not entirely coincidentally, the most vociferous opposition to elections in the East has come from the TNA, who were the chief beneficiaries of the flaws noticed by the European Union monitors. But that factor would escape the notice of a doubtless idealistic European who has no time to go into details.

The link between our Human Rights army and the LTTE became clear when Tamilnet on September 30th reported on a meeting at which the speakers included Ms. Sunila Abeysekera, Executive Director, INFORM, Ms.Karen Parker, Mr. David Rampton, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Executive Director, Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), Rev. Fr. Alphonsus Bernard, Director, CEPAHRC, Jaffna, Fr.Jeyakumar (HUDEC, CARITAS Jaffna) and Mr. Kasinather Sivapalan, Deputy President, Northeast Secretariat on Human Rights (NESOHR) and local nominee to SLMM Trincomalee. Karen Parker, it should be noted, is the American lady who put up a spirited defence of recruiting children over 15 as fighters in her intervention at the UN Human Rights Council.

Now there is nothing wrong in engaging in discussion and debate with the LTTE. The Sri Lankan official delegation to the Council also had this privilege, as regards Mr Sivapalan, who it seems is now resident in Ireland, and Fr Bernard, who also has been abroad for some time. The problem with those Sri Lankans who are usually in Sri Lanka is that they would not engage in the debate to which we had invited them, nor did they invite us to their discussion, which was publicized after we had all left Geneva. The representatives of the UN and Western missions who came to the debate we had set up would doubtless have welcomed listening to an exchange of views, but instead of that our own home grown activists and the LTTE representatives now living abroad had their own cosy little meeting at which they seem to have agreed with each other, like Lear’s Pelican Chorus.

On the strength of such meetings, these Catos, who in their little Senates give themselves their own laws, have decided that ‘The fact of grave human rights crisis has been established.’ So they can assert that Ms Arbour’s ‘visit is not a fact finding mission’. I have no idea whether Ms Arbour shares this view. But one would hope that she is experienced enough to ensure that her office is not used as a tool for political agendas that have no place – particularly when shared by terrorists – in the constant struggle to promote human rights worldwide.

Rajiva Wijesinha
Secretary General, Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process

Louise Arbour’s diabolical project

Tania Noctiummes and Jean-Pierre Page

Courtesy Daily News

10th October 2007
Louise Arbour, former prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, today United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, arrives in Colombo today.

Contrary to the prudence required by an official of a multilateral organisation like the United Nations, she has already proclaimed her intention to press the Government of Sri Lanka to open a field office under her authority to “protect” the citizens of Sri Lanka, implying that the Government of Sri Lanka is not capable of protecting its own citizens!

Does Louise Arbour consider Sri Lanka to be a “failed State”, a dangerous concept of the Bush Administration?

This postulate was relayed in an international campaign by representatives of the so-called civil society whose links and political objectives are those of their donors – Western Governments and NGOs, both international and Sri Lankan, who receive their funds primarily from these same Governments.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other NGOs such as INFORM in Sri Lanka suggest that such an office “could act as a neutral body” to monitor human rights in the country. They say “national mechanisms don’t work”. It is not surprising that under these conditions, the LTTE itself has promoted and welcomed the visit of Louise Arbour.

It is important therefore to re-situate this diabolical project within the context of the profound changes taking place within the United Nations System at the behest of the United States and its partners. Restructuring of the UN Centre for Human Rights has transformed it from a secretariat of the multilateral body – the Human Rights Council – into a highly politicised Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which is increasingly substituting itself for the Human Rights Council and its organs.

None can deny that there is a need to transform the United Nations and the international architecture into a system that represents genuine and greater – not less – multilateralism But that is not the case today Why? In the eyes of the US Administration and its partners, the survival of the multilateral system has become an anachronism.

Its aim now is to transform the organisation into a tool that serves its vision of global supremacy, to gain legitimacy for its preventive wars and its so-called action against terrorism, as well as to promote the rules of the market and guarantee private property.

Under the guise of “freedom to live in dignity,” the former Secretary-General of the United Nations insisted “We must move from an era of legislation to an era of implementation”.

Through his notion of “responsibility to protect potential or actual victims of massive atrocities,” he legitimised foreign intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign States: “if national authorities are unable or unwilling to protect their citizens, then the responsibility shifts to the international community to use diplomatic, humanitarian and other methods to help protect the human rights and well-being of civilian population.

When such methods appear insufficient, the Security Council may out of necessity decide to take action under the Charter of the United Nations, including enforcement action, if so required.”

Under the multilateral vision, the human rights special procedures mechanisms such as Special Rapporteurs were created to exercise a protection or monitoring function from outside the country with due respect for State sovereignty.

Today, Louise Arbour’s mission is to impose upon countries that seek to defend their sovereignty and territorial integrity, a human right field office that would de-legitimise national mechanisms, while at the same time de-legitimising the multilateral system!

Why does Arbour not advocate opening human rights field offices in the United States or in the European Union countries, where it is now an established fact that the CIA has opened secret prisons on the Guantanamo model?

Attempts by the United States and its allied to instrumentalise the United Nations in this field is not new Within the United Nations, the process began with the creation of the highly politicised Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and re-structuring of the former Centre for Human Rights.

The Centre functioned as a secretariat to service the human rights multilateral organ – the Commission on Human Rights and to provide advisory services and technical assistance to Governments – at their request – to establish or strengthen national institutions to carry out protection functions.

An insidious transformation is taking place within that Office turning it into an instrument of direct intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign States through a rapidly growing implantation of field offices essentially staffed by individuals paid by rich donor countries or private institutions.

Arbour’s vision implies new organs, new procedures, new methods of work, and a new type of staff that has more in common with diplomatic mercenaries than with international civil servants!

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has effectively turned into an intelligence-gathering arm in the name of “humanitarian intervention;” A greater human rights field presence during times of crisis would provide timely information to United Nations bodies and, when necessary, draw urgent attention to situations requiring action.”

This logic contributes to legitimising and systematising foreign intervention in all domains, if necessary, by force, “preventively and with the full range of available instruments.”

Such a vision could definitely emasculate the General Assembly of its supreme authority.

An illustration is the obsessive reference to subcontracting of UN programmes and activities, including research, and to ‘strategic partnerships’ with non-State actors of the so-called civil society and the private sector (transnational corporations) as newfound sole authorities. This is also true for human resources within the UN System.

New recruits will serve the political interests of the major financial and military contributors; flexibility and precariousness in staff contracts will facilitate rapid deployment in the service of the new interventionist vision.

Heads of field offices have “the discretion, the means, the authority and the expert assistance that they need to manage an organisation which is expected to meet fast-changing operational needs in many different parts of the world.”

Managers may take unilateral decisions to establish, in a selective and arbitrary manner, “strategic partnerships” with non-State actors of the so-called civil society, NGOs, and the private sector. The political implications will be apparent in the sensitive field of ‘intelligence gathering’ under the guise of protecting the human rights of civilians!

The radical break that Louise Arbour is ardently advocating requires the elimination of the remaining values, principles, and ethics that are linked to the multilateral system and which constitute obstacles to the deployment of the new organisation, as envisioned by the US and its allies.

More than 60 years after the founding of the United Nations, the United States and its partners want to substitute for the common vision held by peoples and States emerging from the victory over fascism, a unilateral and grotesque interpretation of the threats and challenges faced by the world, and actions that must be taken.

Member States are being pressured to adopt “a new security consensus that whatever threatens one threatens all,” and accept that “threats which each region of the world perceives as most urgent are in fact equally so for all.”

According to the multilateral concept of the United Nations, threats to international peace and security are any forcible action by one State against another, against its national sovereignty, its territorial integrity or political independence, the right of people to self-determination and freedom.

It include wars of external aggression, the subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation, as well as armed intervention and all other forms of interference or attempted threats against the personality of the State or against its political, economic and cultural elements.

However, under the vision promoted by Louise Arbour, matters that fall essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of States will be considered threats to international peace and security. ‘New threats’ will include civil violence, organised crime, terrorism, proliferation, small arms and light weapons, weapons of mass destruction, poverty, deadly infectious disease, environmental degradation!

Under the guise of “freeing the world from want,” the Western powers are seeking to legitimise the imposition of conditionalities on poor and weaker developing countries so as to force upon them the single economic model thereby accelerating the process of capitalist globalisation with the accompanying devastation that we are witnessing.

Developing countries are pressured to strengthen so-called ‘governance,’ combat corruption, reduce the State role in the economy and society except those that stimulate private investment, increase the role of the private sector and civil society, provide legal and other guarantees for their activities, including property rights: conditions that already form part and parcel of the controversial structural adjustment programmes of the rich countries and their notorious international financial institutions.

In return, the rich countries will reward developing countries with “increased development assistance, a more development-oriented trade system and wider and deeper debt relief.”

Yesterday, peoples, nations and States were united in the promotion of common values and principles. Today, Louise Arbour’s vision is to unite member States around a manicheistic vision.

Thirty-seven years ago, the Declaration on principles of international law friendly relations and co-operation among States, which further defined the Charter of the United Nations, proclaimed that “States have the duty to co-operate with one another, irrespective of the differences in their political, economic and social systems, in the various spheres of international relations, in order to maintain international peace and security and to promote international economic stability and progress, the general welfare of nations and international co-operation free from discrimination based on such differences.”

Today, instead of cooperation between sovereign States, unilateral humanitarian intervention often under cover of the United Nations – in the name of defence of human rights has become the rule.

From now on, regional arrangements will be replaced by the tenebrous “international community or relevant regional actors and organisations,” with the right to intervene wherever and whenever in accordance with a political agenda.

From now on, local disputes will be replaced by “whatever threatens one threatens all”. From now on, pacific settlement will be replaced by “other methods or the full range of available instruments” Member States and the United Nations will be reduced to less than nothing.

If we should allow victory of unilateralism over multilateralism, NATO intervention against former Yugoslavia, the armed US aggression against Afghanistan, its aggression and occupation of Iraq will retroactively gain legitimacy.

So will the establishment by the Security Council of ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, of which Louise Arbour was the Prosecutor! All that is illegal will become legal; Lies will become truth.

Will Sri Lanka become another target?

Accepting the opening of a United Nations human rights field office in Sri Lanka will be accepting a project which is, in essence, a diabolical one.

Internecine Racism in Sri Lanka: the LTTE’s attacks on Tamils

Statement by Prof Rajiva Wijesinha,

25 September 2007
Statement by Prof Rajiva Wijesinha, exercising the right of reply on behalf of the Sri Lankan delegation, during the debate under Item 6 on Racism, 25th September 2007

Mr Chairman, the Sri Lankan government is as concerned as the representative of Interfaith International about the paucity of minority representation in the armed forces of Sri Lanka as well as in senior official positions. Unlike the representative of Interfaith International however, we should look into the reasons for this.

The fact is that this deficiency is not due to any racist policy, but rather the systematic elimination by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam of Tamils who wish to serve their country. Delegates here may not be aware of the assassination two years ago of the Tamil Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka, the distinguished lawyer Lakshman Kadirgamar. My deputy is a senior Tamil diplomat who was our ambassador in Vienna amongst other places, but he is a brave man. His predecessor as Deputy Secretary General of the Peace Secretariat, the scholar Kethesh Loganathan, was assassinated after websites supportive of the Tigers described him as a collaborator.

In the armed forces there are senior Tamil officers, but enlistment has been forcibly discouraged amongst the young. Recently there were several minority applications for the police, but hardly any Tamils came for the interview. This is understandable in a context in which so many brave servicemen of Tamil or Muslim origin have been killed. Shortly after the Ceasefire Agreement, following the publicization of those working with the army, several were killed including two brilliant intelligence officers.

This decimation of Tamils opposed to the LTTE extended also to politicians who were committed to the democratic process. Recently the People’s Liberation Organization for Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) reported that the LTTE used the CRFA to kill over one thousand civilians – ‘Apart from the killings of civilians, the outfit has also targeted a large number of cadres of rival political parties. Around hundred PLOTE cadres have been killed by the LTTE in the past four years’. Douglas Devananda, the senior Tamil Minister now in the cabinet has survived several assassination attempts.

Certainly Mr Chairman there have been flaws in the Sri Lankan polity, and the excesses of the government of 1983 must be remembered and atoned for. But such practices have not occurred since. The current government is committed, as indeed its predecessors for the last twenty years or more have been, to policies of pluralism. Tamil was made an official language in 1987 by constitutional amendment, to remedy a situation that should never have arisen, but at least through that, through the assertion of the need for at least bilingualism amongst officials, we have done our best to uphold better values.

We deplore therefore the attempt to denigrate the Sri Lankan state, when in fact the chief proponents of racism, directed against fellow Tamils who believe in democracy and others, are the Tigers. Recently, when a former Australian Foreign Minister who sadly does not do his homework, was challenged about a speech he made in which he insinuated that Sri Lanka was responsible for genocide and ethnic cleansing, he passed the buck to his assistant who seemed to have written the speech, and who claimed that ethnic cleansing had indeed taken place in Sri Lanka, in 1990, when the Tigers had driven Muslims out of the northern province that they claim as their traditional homeland. To give the Tigers their due, they have not practised such ethnic cleansing since. But it is disingenuous of the representative of Interfaith International to bandy similar charges when they apply most conspicuously to the organization he seems to adulate.

Response to Misplaced NGO Criticism

Statement by Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha

25th September 2007
Statement by Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha, exercising the right of reply on behalf of the    Sri Lankan delegation, during the debate under Item 4 on Human Rights situations that require the attention of the Human Rights Council, 24th September 2007.

Mr President, Sri Lanka is grateful for assistance with its efforts to improve human rights in our country. As we strive towards perfection, as the European Union so graphically put it, we all need to be aware of our own shortcomings and we welcome countries and responsible institutions drawing our attention to possible violations.

However our task and yours is made more difficult by frivolities that seem to spring from undemocratic political agendas. The recent intervention by the International Commission of Jurists is typical of the absurdities that have multiplied recently. In lumping together Myanmar, the Sudan, The United States and Sri Lanka as egregious examples of human rights violations, ICJ seemed only to be satisfying a taste for the melodramatic.

Sri Lanka has been at the receiving end of such melodrama before. A few weeks back, in reporting on an investigation into the deaths of 17 aid workers. ICJ seized on a discrepancy in a description of a single bullet in the reports of a Sri Lankan and an Australian expert respectively. Privileging the Australian, ICJ had the temerity to claim that there was evidence of tampering with ‘bullets’ on the part of the government. When the Australian, after reviewing the arguments of the Sri Lankan, withdrew his identification and categorically dissociated himself from the ICJ allegation, he became someone with ‘no ballistics expertise’.

Such suppression of truth, such suggestion of falsehood is typical of hucksters, but could not have been expected from the ICJ in its early idealistic days. Now however, when it has to compete with others in the human rights industry, its voice too is as shrill and false as that of newcomers on the scene.

Typical was the other intervention that targeted Sri Lanka, by Ms Nimalka Fernando representing several human rights organizations. Previously her conglomeration had been part of a group that ciruculated a list of hundreds of disappeared, including the names of eight Sri Lankan soldiers, artfully disguised to seem Tamil, at least to an untutored eye unfamiliar with the language. Whether such chicanery was deliberate or otherwise, the callousness with which the dead become statistics, mere grist to the mill of these ghouls, does no service to those who do suffer through violations of human rights.

These do occur, and the Sri Lankan government recognizes this and welcomes assistance to deal with violations. But that most of these are on the part of the LTTE is ignored by these activists who live, and travel extensively, on the backs of suffering human beings. Recently for instance they distributed a leaflet on ‘Attacks on places of religious worship’. Perhaps they intended to convey that most of these were by the LTTE, but the leaflet seemed to target the government. To cite just one item:

‘On 13 August 2006, the Catholic church in Allaipiddy, Jaffna district, norther Sri Lanka, was shelled while civilians sheltered inside. More than 20 people were killed, and around 75 were injured.’

This incident in the self-perpetuating NGO book must have been light years away from what the UN IASC described as follows:

‘On 11 August, when hostilities resumed in Jaffna, the LTTE engaged in a seaborne landing in Allaippiddy. Shelling into the area continued for 48 hours. The Philip Neri Church, where villagers were sheltering, was hit during the shelling and 33 civilians were killed and 10 civilians injured’.

The Advice Of Pundits A Hindrance Towards Implementing The Tasks At Hand

LankaWeb Editorial

17th August 2005

Amidst all the goings on in the aftermath of the Kadirgamar assassination. almost incredibly the New York based organization Human Rights Watch seems to have entered uninvited, the fray of the turmoil within Sri Lanka using the excuse of protecting the Tamils living in Government controlled areas according to latest indications!

While almost ironically the latest investigations clearly indicate that it has indeed been a Tamil household that has harbored the gunmen who killed Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister, there are growing concerns that the terrorists have infiltrated into Government controlled areas with the help of the Tamils who inhabit these areas and something the Human Rights Watch has to pay attention to before shootings its mouth off about the protection of Tamils in Government controlled areas where an alternative solution in the best interests of law and order and a possible prevention of further anarchy need to be hammered out which seems to have escaped the reckoning of the HRW for some strange reason.

It seems almost damnable that there are today in Sinhalese inhabited areas even in a minor perspective in the Colombo region, certain Tamil groups who almost flaunt their existence in these areas. It must also be remembered that it was through the co-operation of such groups that the devastating Airport attack in the not too distant past was carried out where the surreptitious and clandestine activities of certain Tamil groups went unhampered in the periphery of the airport until all hell broke loose! Ironically nothing also has been said by the HRW about the minorities living in so called LTTE controlled areas in Sri Lanka and the attrocities they are being subjected to on a daily basis where the Human Rights Watch are better offcoming up with a more logical and meaningful repartee or shutting up its meaningless rhetoric where the protection of Tamils is no great priority by comparison with that of the citizens of Sri Lanka whose protection from a bunch of ruthless killers the LTTE should rationally take precedence!
The Sri Lankan Government needs no reminding from organiztions such as the HRW about how to protect its minorities in crisis situations which it has done quite acquitably in the past nor does it need any lectures about how to conduct business during an emergency or under the jurisdiction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act which needs to be introduced immediately so as to rectify the huge errors of the past Administrations where its leader gave so much leeway to the mendacious assassins of the LTTE who have attempted not only to penertrate the mantle of security surrounding Colombo but rent its fabric completely apart and what the world is witnessing today are the reprisals for the stupidity of the likes of Ranil Wickremasinghe and his ilk and to a degree one could even link the recent pro LTTE policies of Madame President herself to the manifestations of unrest and violations of the Peace Agreement and Ceasefire which the LTTE have successfully executed under cover of its impervious protection well suited to their means !

It seems somewhat of an obnoxious stand on the part of the HRW to have the affront to instruct Sri Lanka’s law enforcement agencies to soft pedal on what is tantamount to implementing the law during a State of Emergency and High Alert as it is a matter for the Nations highest lawmakers beyond which it would be interference into the internal affairs of a Sovereign Nation where one of its most prominent members of Parliament, an Intellectual of the highest order, a Statesman, Internationally recognized Peace Envoy and proud Son of Lanka has been gunned down by the viles of terrorism which is one of the chief reasons why Sri Lanka finds it a monumental task to quell the attrocities of the LTTE today. In this respect the interferences of Norway too could be typified as an example and the Human Rights Watch is best adviced to solicit their efforts in other areas of the globe which probably have a greater felt need than in Sri Lanka today! as Sri Lanka is fully capable of handling related matters within the highest precepts of the law.

Curiously enough there seems to be uncanny similarities to the meanderings of the HRW with those of the Norwegian Peace Monitors as Human Rights Watch in its statement of a somewhat high handed nature issued in connection with the killing of Lakshman Kadirgamar has indicated that the responsibility for the murder of Kadirgamar, a Tamil politician who had long been critical of the LTTE, ‘has not been determined.’ However it said that the Sri Lankan authorities have blamed the LTTE for the murder, but the investigation is continuing.’ It might be added to this phraseology of seeming convenience by the HRW that all preliminary investigations point to the indelible hand of the LTTE stamped all over the Kadirgamar assassination where confirmed shortwave dispatches of the LTTE have been intercepted by Military intelligence and recorded as admission by LTTE cadre to the despicable crime so what is the HRW babbling about?

There is however an apparent cover up by the Human Rights Watch which has been launched hurriedly and somewhat confusedly point out that the LTTE denied any role in the murder, blaming forces opposed to the cease-fire agreement(Has a familiar ring to it does it not?) but Human Rights Watch has raised the all important question about the reliablity and credibility of the denial by the LTTE where it has hastened to remind the media that the “LTTE has issued similar denials even in other cases of political assassinations in the past where it was proved beyond reasonable doubt that they were clearly involved.” Interpol and the Indian Government must attest to this as Sri lanka’s Public Enemy Number One Is still at large and the HRW’s rhetoric but a weak albeit legitimate offer at best to soften and placate many areas of anger and rising intensities in questioning the legitimacies of the LTTE !

Indeed at this critical juncture of Sri Lankan affairs, the Government needs to exercise an all out drive with no holds barred to bring to justice the perpetrators of this particularly heinous crime which has taken the life of its Foreign Minister as well as others being committed by the LTTE almost synonymously elsewhere in Sri lanka and imperative that the security and investigative forces follow every avenue and means available towards accomplishing this task and maintaining law and order while securing the Nation from further attrocities and what it does not need is the advice of pundits such as the HRW to carry out related duties far removed from being of an excogitative nature which all but appear to be a hindrance and a deterrent towards the task!

After all have they not been doing it for decades despite the glitches and Faux Pas’ which at times have been a direct result of external interference despite which Sri Lanka continues to stand tall as a Sovereign Nation!

The Geneva Battle

Dr.Dayan Jayatilleka Sri Lanka’s Ambassador /Permanent Representative to the UN Geneva (Speaking) and Prof.Rajiva Wijesinha Secretary General – SCOPP

18th December 2007
The success of Sri Lanka’s aggressively independent stance was reflected in the outcome of the 6th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that concluded Friday.

To the great embarrassment of Sri Lanka, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, declared that the Colombo government’s human rights enforcement machinery was ineffective and urged the setting up of a UN rights monitoring office in the country.

Arbour’s call came in the context of the fact that, through 2006 and 2007, 290,000 civilians, mostly Tamils and some Muslims, had been displaced by the war and over 3,500 were killed. Attacks, extortions, abductions, disappearances and arbitrary detentions were going on, sometimes with state backing and aided by the tough anti-terror law made in December 2006.

The delegations of the US, EU, France, South Korea, Sweden, Canada and New Zealand voiced support for Arbour’s call to set up a UN monitoring office in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka seemed to be isolated, but it fought the move tooth and nail — and succeeded in scuttling it.

Talking the battle into the adversary’s territory, its ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Dayan Jayatilleke, said his country did not want to be ‘preached’ by states whose human rights record was ‘far from perfect’. Sri Lanka would take advice from international bodies only when these had ‘transparency of funding’ and when their agendas were ‘not donor driven’, he declared brazenly.

Sri Lankan officials had kept hammering the point that their country could not be asked to observe Queensberry Rules in a war-cum-insurgency situation in which a beleaguered state was battling one of the most ruthless and well-organised insurgent groups in the world. They accused the UN agencies and international rights organisations of not taking adequate note of the LTTE’s rights violations or rapping it hard enough.

To the delight of Sri Lankan delegation and disappointment of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the UN council concluded its deliberations without passing the expected resolution castigating Sri Lanka. Japan, India and the Philippines had thrown their weight behind Sri Lanka at the council.

Clearly, the LTTE’s behaviour since the Norway-sponsored ceasefire agreement in 2002 had helped the Sri Lankan government bolster its case against censure.

The LTTE had scuttled peace talks, provoked the government to take military action, bombed civilians outside the war zone and assassinated political leaders by using suicide bombers.

The international community was indeed concerned about the suffering of the Tamils and Muslims in the war zones of the north and east. But this concern could not be translated into concrete support for these communities because the LTTE would not play ball. The LTTE was also using forms of violence like suicide bombing which are deplored in the present day world.
India shared Sri Lanka’s views on the LTTE as it had discovered, over years of close interaction, that it could not have any meaningful interaction with that militant group. The LTTE was too narrow minded and intransigent for that.

As for Japan, it had turned hostile to the LTTE after its repeated efforts to get it to the negotiating table failed. The LTTE had also spurned Japanese offers of development aid if it took the path of peace. No wonder then that both New Delhi and Tokyo stood by Colombo at Geneva.

While Colombo’s case at the Human Rights Council may have some merits, the persistent attacks against UN organisations and international NGOs seem to be needlessly confrontational. But here again, there has been no backlash of any kind from the affected parties.

Unicef has come in for much flak both in parliament and outside for having, in its offices, ‘Ready to Eat’ food packets supplied by a French military contractor. It was alleged that the packets were meant for the LTTE’s fighting units!

Unicef explained that such packets were routinely distributed among its offices in conflict areas across the globe as part of a survival kit. But the government remained unconvinced and police sleuths were told to probe the allegation.

International NGOs working in the conflict zone routinely face hostility, both in word and deed.

British High Commissioner Dominic Chilcott appealed to Sri Lankans not to demonise UN organizations, but this fell on deaf ears. At any rate, Chilcott had spoilt his case by saying that the LTTE’s demand for an independent ‘Eelam’ was not ‘illegitimate’.

The government not only summoned him for a dressing down but also announced that it would complain to the Foreign Office in London.

Earlier, in August, cabinet minister Jeyaraj Fernandopulle called the UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, John Holmes, a ‘terrorist who had taken money from the LTTE’. Holmes had said that Sri Lanka was a ‘risky’ place for aid workers.

When UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon described Fernandopulle’s remark as ‘unacceptable and unwarranted’, the minister made it plain that he did not ‘care a damn.’ The UN’s response to this was silence.

AI and HRW, Stop Violating Our Rights

Dilrook Kannangara

10th April 2007
In a pathetic display of a miserable diversion from what they ought to stand for, AI and HRW have degenerated to the lowest ebb of morale. I refer to how they attempt to discredit Sri Lankans, our nation and the Sri Lanka Cricket team by launching a smear campaign in the West Indies. Cricketers have nothing to do with human rights and AI/HRW bluebottles have no right to demoralise them. The proper game for AI/HRW to poke their dirty fingers is the game played by suicide bombers.

This is not the first time losers of the battlefield crept into the Cricket World Cup. In 1999 a similar situation arose when planes were used to display large slogans reading: killing tamils is not cricket. Of course its not cricket, otherwise Tamils won’t play cricket! This time it goes: Play by the Rule; well our cricketers know the rules of the game; they aren’t the clowns who missed the circus for the cricket!

It is more than clear that the smear campaigners are hell bent on violating the rights of not only Sri Lankan cricketers, fans around the world but also they are trying to destroy the very base of sportsmanship. It is the combined effort of hypocrisy and gross rights violation coming together to cause harm, mistrust, disgust and ill-will. Only they can make a complete mockery of human rights.

A. This smear campaign will achieve nothing but disgust. It will not reduce human rights violations in Sri Lanka. For the knowledge of AI and HRW I list down the major HR violations that actually takes place in Sri Lanka that go unnoticed.
1. Forced conscription of children and others into suicide brigades by the LTTE; in any civilised society abetting suicide is a grave crime.
2. Causing fear and terror among the 20 million population by causing bomb blasts deliberately targeting civilians, using innovative terror tactics, suppressing democracy and killing democratic politicians, etc by the LTTE. It is pathetic that no organisation stands up for human rights (HR) protection of the 20 million law abiding Sri Lankans threatened by the LTTE; all the following rights of the 20 million are at stake to varying degrees solely because of the LTTE and their affiliate human rights activists (omission also causes crimes).
2.1. right to live in any part of the country without fear/terror
2.2. right to get an education, attend schools and universities safely
2.3. right to engage in professions, occupations, vocations, self-employment and to travel to and from workplaces
2.4. right to protect the law & order and national and public assets
2.5. right to determine matters of national significance, the right to be a patriot and to promote patriotism
2.6. right to profess any faith and to condemn acts of terror, to travel to places of religious worship without being victim to roadside bombs, LTTE recruiters and road blocks
2.7. right to exterminate terrorists and other evil elements
2.8. right to play and engage in sports without being victim to terrorists, mud-slingers, jealous hypocrites, etc
3. Undue interference in Sri Lankan affairs by outsiders. We are a sovereign nation capable of managing our own affairs if we are left to decide our own future. We want our voted representatives to do what we want and not what clowns want them to do. Countries that do not give a flying f* about AI and HRW (China, Malaysia, Singapore, etc.) are doing really well in all aspects of human life, including HR and their leaders are our role models; we all hope that our country would be like one of them one day. Our nation is not a disaster to be exploited for human rights projects, etc. only to sustain an immoral livelihood for HR activists.

B. Then there are grave and real HR violations taking place or have taken place in Iraq, Afghanistan, Argentina, Germany, France, Rwanda, US, UK, South Africa, Korea, the Philippines, etc. Scores have been killed (and are being killed), intimidated, discriminated, ravished, marginalised based on skin colour and the list is endless. It is hypocrisy on the part of human rights activists that these crimes go unpunished, without apologies, without compensation and without much ado. Did these clowns ever paint their nonsense on soccer, rugby, tennis, basketball, baseball or other balls when their financiers were involved? Where is fair play which is a cornerstone of human rights? Foul play has replaced fair play in the texts of some HR activists.

C. What about the relative good of the Sri Lankan government and the security forces? Compare the number of sexual offences committed in the 24 year old war by the SLA with other conflicts. Factor in the added inducement present in the SL war theatre where LTTE engages girls, women and prostitutes as their main fighting cadre!! It is nothing but noble how decent SL government forces behave considering the World Wars, Bosnian-Serbian war, two Gulf wars, Northern Ireland, Afghanistan wars, Vietnam War, Pakistani-Bangladeshi war, Indian internal conflicts and Indian army in SL, etc. Moreover, educational, medical, recreational and administrative expenses in LTTE controlled areas are borne by the GoSL. Terror leaders’ children were educated by the GoSL free of charge!! Our concern for human rights has even extended to inhumans. Where on earth do you find such Mahatma qualities and why these go unnoticed all the time by HR activists?

There are a few lessons these HR activists need to learn.
1. Affairs of sovereign nations should be left for its citizens to handle. Any violation of the Geneva Convention should be taken up at the Hague and other proper forums.
2. Smear and mud projects, discredit, intimidation, abuse and the like will never cohabit with human rights; as the saying goes the end justifies the means.
3. Sport should be left to sportsmen, sporting officials and fans; sport has always been a powerful means of human integration and it should be left that way.
4. Cricket and clowns do not go together and therefore clowns and their balls should not interfere with the Gentlemen’s Game.
5. Play by the Rule; don’t violate the rules of morality, fair play and impartiality before adjudging the HR situation of others.
6. Our resolve to exterminate terrorists cannot be shaken away by acts of idiocy. We shall exterminate all LTTE terrorists and make them history.

Well, they have a lot to learn and they also have to learn how not to be remembered as World Cup Clowns.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH HAS PUBLISHED A COMPLETE FABRICATION OF A SHOUTING INCIDENT SAYS SRI LANKA

By Walter Jayawardhana

11th -August 2007
Information Minister Anura Priyadarshana Yapa said that an incident reported in the New York based Human Rights Watch about a purported shouting incident by the country’s President at a newspaper editor is a complete fabrication.

“ I was present at this meeting and no such incident has ever taken place and this is a complete fabrication,” said the minister whose statement was carried by a national television channels.
Minister Yapa said in chapter 8 entitled ‘Freedom of Expression and Association’ of the Human Rights Watch it is said that Mr. N. Vithyadaran of the newspaper Sudar Oli was shouted at by the country’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa at a breakfast meeting in August last year.

Quoting the report the Minister said that it stated when the pro- LTTE editor raised the “unexpected withdrawal of his security” the President immediately lost his temper and started to shout. He reportedly told the Human Rights Watch the President had told him to seek security from the LTTE leader Prabhakaran.

The Minister said he was present at this meeting and nothing of that nature has ever occurred.
The Minister said the editor of another Tamil paper called Thinamurusu has been now cited as a witness to the incident by this editor in Sudar Oli. But , the Minister said Editor of Thinamurusu has called him and assured him that nothing of this nature had ever happened and he was no witness to such an incident.

The Minister said this an example how this report has been written without verifying facts and on hearsay.

Laxman Priyadarshana Yapa said, in Sri Lanka there is freedom for any editor to write or say anything. But when people start writing fabrication the country’s image gets destroyed.
Meanwhile commenting on the incident the state run Daily News said:

“Among the many unconfirmed and unsubstantiated allegations made in the latest report by Human Rights Watch on Sri Lanka, published on August 06, 2007, the item about President Mahinda Rajapaksa losing his temper and shouting at a Tamil newspaper editor has been found to be false and baseless.

Human Rights Watch has neither had the courtesy nor the ethical consideration to inquire about the accuracy of this alleged incident from the Office of the President, which was responsible for organizing the breakfast meeting of the 25 editors with President Mahinda Rajapaksa on August 16, 2006, before its publication.

Instead HRW has published the unverified version given by the Editor of the Sudar Oli, in a clear example of the tendentious nature of the report, aimed at tarnishing the image of the President and the Government of Sri Lanka.

The Director of Government Information who was present at this breakfast meeting has written to Human Rights Watch contradicting this section of the report. Other misleading aspects of the report have been commented on by the Secretary General of the Peace Secretariat.”

Director of Information Anusha Palpita who was also present at the meeting wrote to Human Rights Watch and said, “As a person who was present at the editor’s meeting with the President, I totally deny such an incident at the said meeting.

“This is an absolutely incorrect statement and all the editors who were present would vouch that President did not shout at Mr Vithyatharan or anybody else at any of the meetings with editors. I am sure that Mr Vithyatharan will not be able to produce any one of the 25 editors who were present on the occasion to corroborate his allegation because no self-respecting media person would standby a total fabrication.

Publication of such baseless canards in your website reflects very badly on the credibility of the organization.”
http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items07/110807-3.html

New York Based Human Rights Watch’s Exposure Of The LTTE Long Overdue!

Nandimithra Perera ~Popular Front Against Terrorism In Sri Lanka (PFATISL) For LankaWeb

17-March-2006
It is not only the The plight of the Tamils in the diaspora threatened by the LTTE which has at last been documented and exposed by the New York based Human Rights Watch as reported by the Asian Tribune but also the blatant indiscretions which have continued for decades by these so called Western Nations who pawned the plight of the non LTTE supportive Tamils towards their own purposes and projected many undiscerning innocent victims to live in fear and uncertainty. All kudos to HRW and may their projected aspirations towards truly exposing the LTTE as well as any other similar outfits of terror and mayhem result in the complete eradication of International terrorism.This is a small step in the right direction which will undoubtedly be rewarded greatly and from which Sri Lanka is bound to benefit immensely alongside all other countries plagued with the wretched manifestations and infestations of global terrorism!

Significantly the complaints of Tamil expatriates threatened, intimidated and attacked, either in the diaspora or in Sri Lanka, were for a long time ignored by Western Governments, though they knew what was happening under their noses particularly in countries such as Canada now turning about face with the new Harper Administration adopting a zero tolerance attitude, Australia which seems divided over tolreance and the UK wishy wash at best as the continued tolerance of Anton Balasingham’s antics and the permission granted towards his covert terrorist supportive activities in the UK seem to attest to.Shameful manifestations of abject apathy on the part of the Administrations of these countries and mercifully the real truth about the goings on of LTTE activities overseas have now been exposed to lend credence towards their complete global banning if any sense or sensibility is to prevail over the overall reality that these are mendacious, ruthless, directionless (other than towards their wretched objectives and survival) and conscienceless criminals who have wreaked havoc on a Sovereign Nation and projected global criminalities through the concept of suicide bombing which they alone pioneered as the world now helplessly watches some of the ramifications almost on a daily basis!

Beyond the shadow of a doubt and taking into consideration the many intelligence reports which have surfaced over the years about Norway’s role as harbingers of LTTE conceived idealogies, Norway has indeed been one of the largest LTTE sympathisers where the LTTE held sway in a most inconceivable symbiosis with the Norwegian Government which continued to turn a blind eye on all LTTE attrocities committed for decades and ignored many complaints from very credible sources.

One time Norwegian chief representative in the Sri Lankan Peace Process assigned to monitor rather than execute policies towards resolving the ethnic issue as part of the SLMM, Erik Solheim can be labelled one of the chief culprits as pointed out on many occassions by dissenting yet discerning Tamils expatriates and other vehemently opposed sections of the Sri Lankan establishment of his bifurcated attitude which leaned heavily in favour of the LTTE but he repeatedly turned a blind eye to cover up for his LTTE sympathies and the skulduggery of the LTTE continued. Remarkably even to this day he has been able to pull the wool over some of the Sri Lankan hierarchy that his intentions are noble towards the cause of Sri Lanka’s Peace when in reality it is as insincere as the Devil’s itself.
It has to be reiterated in as far as the question posed by the latest expose by the Human Rights Watch ~ “What will the Western Governments do collectively to bring the LTTE agents to book.’Will it be mere lip service once again by some that the LTTE are involved in a peace process and has to be further tolerated or will they toe the line of the USA and the UK that their continued attrocities will be met head on and quashed!? Questions needing implicit answers in the very near future!

The LTTE are on rather thin ice if a recent statistics report compiled by intelligence sources are accurate within a marginal error factor that their entire cadre ensemble amounts to no more tha 1300 + insurgents and subversives and that they appear to be pulling off a huge bluff aided and abeted by countries like Norway that they are powerful enough to overrun the Sri Lankan Armed Forces, something which has been refuted by the powerful status quo of Sri Lankan Defence and its leaders.

The world has finally awoken to what the LTTE really stand for, as reports continue to flood in of a desperate fund raising campaign globally towards a final Eelam War and contrary to the circumstances in the past where individuals coerced by the LTTE caved into their intimidations through fear of reprisals today there are many dissenting Tamil Expatriates prepared to stand up to the LTTE and deny their demands very bravely and nobly towards the collective well being of their motherland.

It is hoped that the New York based Human Rights Watch has now set the ball rolling in the right direction through their exposure of the LTTE in their truest of colours and that the Government of Sri Lanka will be prompted to move accordingly to expunge the evils of the LTTE through appropriate means rather than dancing to their tunes and those of Norway where the Nation of Sri Lanka will finally be eradicated of the vermin that continues to plague her well being and those of all her citizens who are in great need of restitution for their sufferings at the hands of the LTTE!

It now seems an imperative responsibility for the Sri Lankan Government combined with the fullest support from all its Western allies to protect all Tamil Expatriates as a bounden duty towards them for their courageous stand in the face of the LTTE threat which continues to hamper their peaceful existences whether in domestic enclaves or internationally and nations such as Canada and Norway amongst others should atone for their sins of ommission towards the cause and join hands with all the nations in condemnation of the LTTE who continue to remain fully armed unrelenting terrorists for whom there is neither a place in Sri Lanka nor in any global environment! towards acceptance as a legal entity !

http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items06/170306-2.html