Colombopage.com
October 05, 2011
Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa ceremoniously declared open the newly constructed four-storied administrative complex in Hambanthota Tuesday (04).Speaking at the occasion, the President said the government implements development programmes not only for the benefit of the present generation but also for the prosperity of future generations as well.
The government aims provide the people with benefits of development regardless of their political and ethnic differences, the President added.
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The five-storied building complex, built at a cost of 2.9 billion rupees on a 72-acre land in Siribopura, Gonnoruwa in Hambanthota, is to house the district's all major government institutions, department offices and the office complexes demolished for the Hambanthota port construction.
Accordingly, 42 Government institutions will be housed in this administrative complex including Hambanthota District Secretariat, Divisional Secretariat, banks, post offices, Local Government institutions, libraries, electricity depots, telecommunication offices and many other state and public sector offices making it convenient for the public to receive all state services from one location.
The Exim Bank of South Korea had granted funds for the project and the Urban Development Authority has carried out the construction.
Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa, External Affairs Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris, Minister of Public Administration and Home Affairs W.D.J. Seneviratne, Minister of Disaster Management Mahinda Amaraweera, Deputy Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Nirupama Rajapaksa, South Korean Ambassador to Sri Lanka Choi Jong Moon and other distinguished guests participated in the ceremony.
(Photos by Sudath Silva)
95 comments:
Magampura Rises Again!
JAYAWEWA, Sri Lanka!
Ratna Deepa Janma Bhumi
Lanka Deepa Vijaya Bhumi
Mey Apey Udara Wu
Mathru Bhumi-yayi!
Mathru Bhumi-yayi!
Yahoo! Norwegian "Boys" Vs the REST of the "Boys"!
Demonizing Sri Lanka has been such a good excuse for raising "Pongu Thamil" money for the LTTE ... no Tamil Diaspora Eelamist Group wants to let go of the Money Stream!
May these modern-day Al Capones BANKRUPT the Eelamists!
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As fresh fund raising campaign gets underway: LTTE factions on collision course
By Shamindra Ferdinando
Island.lk
October 4, 2011
The government believes that various LTTE factions are making an attempt to streamline fund raising operations for the separatist cause in the wake of a section of the international community turning the heat on Sri Lanka over accountability issues.
The LTTE fund collection network collapsed in early 2009 even before the conclusion of the conflict in May 2009.
Intelligence and External Affairs Ministry sources told The Island that those pursuing the LTTE’s cause had cited their efforts to move the US judiciary against President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Sri Lanka’s No 02 at the UN Maj. Gen. Shavendra Silva over accountability issues as a main reason for fresh funds.
Sources said that the LTTE had launched an expensive campaign targeting Sri Lanka at the Commonwealth and the UN.
The government is in the process of reviewing LTTE operations in several countries, including Canada where the group was making headway in its anti-Sri Lanka campaign, particularly in the Commonwealth in spite of sharp differences among key LTTE operatives based in Canada.
Responding to a query, sources said that there had been disputes among various factions based in Canada and US, with arrangements being made to resume collection of taxes. Sources said that one of the factions was in the process of organizing Pongu Thamil celebration this month in Canada ahead of LTTE’s heroes’ week scheduled for late November. The two major factions operating in Canada and the US are led by Norwegian and US passport holders of Sri Lankan origin.
Sources said that Canadian Premier Stephen Harper’s recent warning that he would boycott Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Colombo now scheduled for 2013 unless the government took tangible action on accountability issues had given a major boost to LTTE.
The faction led by the Norwegian passport holder is also facing opposition in France by another group trying to assert its authority in the country. Sources identified the person now seeking control over LTTE operations in France as Vinayagamoorthi Sekara Pillai, alias Vinayagam, alias Arivalagan.
An intelligence official said: "Vinayagam is operating on his own and is strengthening his group by recruiting fresh supporters. He is in the process of collecting data on LTTE properties in Europe, and planning to take them over in the near future."
Sources said Vinayagam was likely to set up new NGOs to oversee LTTE properties in European countries. In spite of warning by the rivals, Vinayagam was going ahead with his operations, sources said.
As fresh fund raising campaign gets underway: LTTE factions on collision course
.....continued......
Sources said that rivalry among senior LTTE operatives could lead to violence. Sources recalled the arrest of four Sri Lankan Tamils by the French police in early June last year in connection with the killing of Ramesh Sivarupan. Although the police hadn’t come across evidence to suggest that post-war rivalry caused the killing, the Tamil community blamed simmering disputes among various factions triggered the attack. Sources said that there had been a number of instances when newspapers published by various factions were set on fire by rivals.
Sources said that the situation had been relatively calm in Norway following a bloody clash between rival Tamil groups at a post-war kovil festival in Oslo on Aug. 7 last year caused injuries to six persons and led to the arrest of three men. Sivaganesh Vadivelu, a member of the Norwegian Council of Eelam Tamil (NCET) had been among the wounded.
Sources said that in Germany, too, the disputes had erupted over foreign assets belonging to the LTTE. Sources said that the group led by the Norwegian passport holder had been in collision course with LTTE groups in Canada, US, France, Norway and Germany.
Sources said that differences had emerged between two groups for control of Finances, leading to the closure of some schools run by them. Sources identified one of the groups involved in the dispute as a business organization which owned a small-scale chain of super markets.
MASSIVE NATO War Crimes go unpunished, yet Sri Lanka is the focus of war crimes allegations!
Navaneetham Pillai ... War Crimes expert at the UN ... ARE YOU BLIND?
Where are YOU?
Too BUSY doing the PUPPET DANCE for the Western Neo-Colonialists to pay ATTENTION to their MURDERS?
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Afghanistan's Dirty War: Why the Most Feared Man in Bermal District Is a U.S. Ally
By Julius Cavendish / Kabul
Time.com
October 04, 2011
Azizullah, in Afghanistan's Paktika province on Sept. 23, 2010, leads a ferocious 400-man militia of Afghan security guards
That's hardly surprising, say human-rights experts. Getting to the bottom of allegations like these is difficult at the best of times. It took me months to organize meetings with sources from the area and persuade them to speak out. Terrified as they are, villagers are going to be even less likely to complain to the U.S. forces they hold responsible for empowering Azizullah. Exacerbating that, NATO "doesn't bring a great deal of healthy skepticism" to investigations, which might include statements by troops on the ground, a review of video footage or signals intelligence — and not much else, says Erica Gaston, a human-rights lawyer for the Open Society Foundations. "That's not a bad methodology to start out with," says Gaston, "but if you really want to get the whole story on accusations of misconduct — particularly when they involve local warlords — you need to get out and talk to the community. That just isn't how [NATO] investigations work generally."
Meanwhile, a blistering report by Human Rights Watch, published last month, provides credible evidence that far from being the exception, behavior like Azizullah's is commonplace in Afghanistan. It found that militias, many of them created by NATO despite reservations by President Hamid Karzai, are murdering, raping and torturing civilians (including children), extorting illegal taxes and smuggling contraband. In one instance, Afghan paramilitaries allegedly abducted two teenagers and drove nails through the feet of one. The 102-page report titled Just Don't Call It a Militia documents how parts of the Afghan establishment and the U.S. military have provided guns and money to paramilitary groups without adequate oversight or accountability. Because of their links to senior Afghan officials or U.S. special-operations forces, many of these groups operate with impunity. (See how Pakistan's spat highlights the bitter truths facing the U.S. in Afghanistan.)
In Azizullah's case, the allegations and the military's response offer an uncomfortable glimpse of the clandestine war that Afghan paramilitaries bankrolled by the U.S. are waging against al-Qaeda and the Taliban — and the lack of accountability they're subject to. The dirty war is "very poorly understood," says Michael Semple, a Harvard fellow and leading expert on Afghanistan, even though it's been "a central part of the strategy for the past decade." A Special Forces captain called Matt, who has served in Afghanistan but has no involvement with Azizullah, described Afghan security guards — which is a generic term — as "the most effective fighting formation in Afghanistan" for the extent of the war. "This is undisputed fact," he said. Yet groups like the Afghan security guards have remained steadfastly off the radar. Semple says that, when he was working on security-sector reform in Afghanistan, it was only "with great difficulty" that you could get the NDS — the country's security service — on to the agenda. As for the private militias run by special forces or the CIA? "Never."
Afghanistan's Dirty War: Why the Most Feared Man in Bermal District Is a U.S. Ally
....continued 1....
On paper, Azizullah and his Afghan security guards exist to protect Firebase Lilley, a remote outpost in eastern Paktika province that doubles as a listening post for the CIA and a training hub for some of the agency's 3,000 private troops (known as Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams). But the Afghan guards do a bit more than pull guard. Battlefield reporting published by WikiLeaks suggests they act with a degree of autonomy, sometimes running their own missions despite Azizullah's claim that he can't go "10 meters" without a Green Beret in tow. And whatever the degree of oversight he's subject to by his military advisers, even Azizullah accepts that his main job is killing Taliban. "Recently I was injured again when we set an ambush for people firing rockets onto [Firebase Lilley]," he said in his February phone interview with TIME. "When we saw them, we started shooting at each other and I was hurt [along with] Nick, a U.S. special-forces guy, and a soldier called Shazaman." He also used the interview to deny all allegations of wrongdoing.
"Since the Taliban and al-Qaeda couldn't kill me with their suicide attacks or land mines, they're now using propaganda against me. I have never killed anyone innocent. I'm a very religious person; I respect my religion, so how could I desecrate a mosque or kill a civilian? ... You won't find a single person who can prove that I've done anything you mention, like raping boys, desecrating mosques or killing innocent people." (See why there is growing doubt about the strategy in Afghanistan.)
During the interview, the leader of the U.S. special-forces detachment supporting Azizullah, who called himself Dan, came on the phone. "We've gone a huge way as far as collateral damage and civilian casualties [go]," he said. "That's gone down quite a bit. We have quite a bit of control over our partner's force and ... we do everything we can to [avoid civilian casualties]. There's been really no civilian casualties, at least since I've been here."
Afghanistan's Dirty War: Why the Most Feared Man in Bermal District Is a U.S. Ally
....continued 2.....
Azizullah's relationship with U.S. special forces began soon after the 2001 invasion, when he was one of the first Afghan security guards to sign on. As an ethnic Tajik born and bred in a largely Pashtun area, Azizullah had suffered under the predominantly Pashtun Taliban — and possessed the kind of social geography that may have appealed to his new American mentors. "Right from the early days, the Americans seemed to work with people from that enclave," says Harvard's Semple. Special forces "want to work with people from a minority community that's never going to go over to ... the Haqqanis, that [has an] interest in maintaining the patronage of the outside force."
But if the upside of working with collaborators from Urgun, Azizullah's home district, is that they will never go over to the insurgents, then the downside is that patronage bestowed on them by American forces stirs ethnic jealousies. Friends say Azizullah saw American patronage as a sign that his time had come, and battlefield reporting from 2007 allegedly had him intervening in local business disputes. Analysts, merchants and villagers say the Pashtun majority feels marginalized by what they see as an unfair distribution of the money pouring in, in the shape of contracts from Firebase Lilley. "The perception is [the Tajiks] get all the contracts, all the jobs," one source said. That perceived hoarding of the spoils, and Azizullah's apparent impunity, are paving the way for violent repercussions. "People are so angry with him that when the U.S. Army stops supporting him, his body will be hacked into 1,000 pieces by the people," an acquaintance of Azizullah said. Vengeance will likely be visited on the whole Tajik community.
The shadowy war waged along Afghanistan's eastern border is certainly no place for armchair morality. The conflict "is not pretty," cautions Matt, the Green Beret captain. "It insults our Western morals and perspectives on life, [which are] a modern luxury, born of hundreds of years of vicious fighting and ... not shared by 80% of the world today."
But the allegations of persistent human-rights abuses aren't just embarrassing from a moral perspective. They also showcase the biggest drawbacks of militias — which NATO wants to expand aggressively across Afghanistan in the shape of "Afghan local police," and has made a hallmark of its exit strategy. Critics say that although the plan may temporarily help dent the Taliban, the consequences are too awful to contemplate: resurgent warlords, deepening ethnic tensions, widespread bloodletting and the erosion of what little authority the government in Kabul has left. The cost of some short-term success in the military fight against the Taliban could, over time, become a return to Afghanistan's darkest days.
Asia will lead way out of crisis - Governor
By Indunil HEWAGE
DailyNews.lk
October 05, 2011
Sri Lankan banks and financial institutions need to create additional space to face future economic shocks in the world to remain economically robust and responsible for the well-being of the public, Central Bank Governor Ajith Nivaard Cabraal said.
Addressing the 28th General Meeting and conference of Asian Bankers’ Association held in Colombo he said, Asia has become the growth engine of the world’s economy and one can see a trendy shift of economic activities from western super powers to Asia during the last couple of years.
“Asia has started on a very different growth paradigm and it is time for Asian banks and financial institutions to show real leadership in re-balancing the global economy,” the Governor said.
Asia will lead the way out of the crisis for the rest of the world and its contribution to GDP of world economy will be 52 percent by 2050.Asia has been an important cog in the world’s economy and has managed to create a sense of economic sustainability despite the effects of the global economic turmoil.
Commodity has become a financial instrument in global economic context and the financialization of commodity market has not been a favourable situation since it has created enormous imbalances to the global economy and it is time for Sri Lanka to re-balance investments strategies to achieve set targets in the economy. Prudent policies need to be taken immediately to address key issues that hampers economic activities in the Asian region and it will pave the way to maintain a sustainable economic growth. With that, banks and financial institutions will have great responsibilities to cater to the rising expectations from Asian masses in the future while gaining public confidence along with adhering to international financial reforms and regulations.
Policy consistencies and clarity in economy will be the main components to instill the public confidence, Cabraal said.
In ONE Word ... WOW!
Every Day .. in Every Way ... Sri Lanka MOVES FORWARD!
Jayawewa!
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Modern bus stand in Negombo declared open
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 04, Negombo: Sri Lanka Minister of Economic Development Basil Rajapaksa Tuesday (04) declared open the newly constructed Negombo Bus Stand Complex with modern amenities.
The Ministry of Economic Development and the Negombo Municipal Council jointly provided the funds for the three-storied bus stand built at a cost of Rs. 220 Million.
Among several facilities, the 60,000- square feet complex encloses a 78 trade stalls, a public restaurant, resting and waiting halls and a Cinema Theatres in the top floor.
Arrival and departures of the buses will be displayed on digital screens similar to the flights schedule displays at airports for the convenience of nearly 35,000 passengers who are using the bus stand daily.
Several ministers, deputy ministers, parliamentarians and provincial councilors also participated in the event.
Steve Jobs has passed away.
A GREAT GOOD TALENTED and INSPIRING MAN, who has done much good in this world has passed from the scene ... and we are poorer for it.
He improved the lives of millions of people the world over ... and we Sri Lankan Patriots honor him and mourn his passing.
May he attain Nibbana!
Netherlands to SHUT DOWN madrassa-style brainwashing schools of the LTTE!
Bravo!
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Netherlands to probe LTTE front organizations run private schools
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 05, The Hague: Ivo Opstelten, the Minister of Security and Justice of the Netherlands government has said that the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security (NCTV) is considering to take action against the Saturday schools run by the front organizations of Tamil Tigers in the country.
A Dutch national police report recently revealed that the front organizations of Sri Lanka's defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) operate 21 schools in the country and during the weekend classes the Tamil children are taught materials that glorify the LTTE's armed struggle for a separate homeland in Sri Lanka.
Security Minister Opstelten has told the Dutch MPs that the schools are not part of the state education system, but offer children lessons in Tamil culture out of regular school hours, Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW) reported.
The schools are located in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag, Breda, Eindhoven, Arnhem and Leeuwarden.
The Minister has said that the Public Prosecutor were to bring the issue of closing the schools to the attention of the local authorities concerned when the Dutch Magistrate Court delivers the verdict on the trial of the five Dutch Tamil Tigers accused of extorting money to fund the LTTE war machine in Sri Lanka.
The Minister has said that however acting on a plea from the Christian Democrat party, the NCTV would investigate whether it is feasible to take action sooner, RNW reported.
The LTTE is a banned outfit in the European Union.
As long as PUBLIC DEBT is controlled, and allocated to long-term investments in INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT and NOT to CURRENT CONSUMPTION, Sri Lanka should do well.
However, increasing the Govt payroll for non-productive make-work, driving Govt salaries beyond what private industry pays for political leverage, and granting public benefits programs without either beneficiary contributions or funds set apart on a pay-in as you go basis can WRECK the Govt budget and the economy.
We should BEWARE OF PONZI SCHEMES, that are based on paying current beneficiaries from anticipated contributions of future beneficiaries.
Such UNFUNDED ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS are at the ROOT of the CURRENT economic disaster confronting Western countries.
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SL's quality of life set to increase –CB
By Channa Fernandopulle
DailyMirror.lk
October 07, 2011
The overall quality of life of Sri Lankans is set to increase in the near future, according to Deputy Governor of the Central Bank.
“Sri Lanka is now entering a high growth period in which we expect to see a high quality living, high income levels and better living standards,” said K.G.D.D. Dheerasinghe, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank.
Dheerasinghe was speaking at the inauguration of a knowledge-sharing
conference titled: Role of Real Property Development in an Emerging Economy”, organized by the Center for Banking Studies, Central Bank of Sri Lanka, the Urban Development Authority and the Institute of Real Estate and Valuation, Sri Lanka.
Dheerasinghe spoke about some of the gains that Sri Lanka had made in the recent past with regard to the real GDP growth of 10%in 2010 against the 3.5% growth in 2009 at a time in which global markets were still reeling from the effects of the global financial crisis.
“Most of the advanced countries had experienced negative growth during this time. Emerging markets including Sri Lanka however managed to tackle these problems better than the rest,” Dheerasinghe pointed out.
“All in all Sri Lanka is positioned to enjoy a high growth trajectory. Property development will play an important role in this and we at a macro economic level are trying to promote such growth.”
According to Dheerasinghe, the tourism sector in the country is one which needs to increase it’s contribution to the countries GDP in order to maintain current projections.
“At present, tourism in Sri Lanka accounts for only about 0.5% of GDP, but looking at the future tourism will grow fast and is expected to exceed 5% of GDP in the next 10 years.” “I’m glad that this conference is pertinent and timely to the situation. The construction industry is the fastest growing sector. Overall, we hope to see the Sri Lankan economy grow by 8.3% by the end of 2011, and the construction sector is one which is leading this high growth path.”
Sri Lanka ruling party secures victory in 21 out of 23 local government polls
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 08, Colombo: Sri Lanka's ruling party United People's Freedom Alliance has secured victory in all but two local government bodies, results released so far showed.
The race between the ruling UPFA and main opposition United national Party (UNP) has come very close for the Kandy Municipal Council (MC) with UPFA receiving 49.78% of the votes and UNP receiving 43.12%. The UPFA has taken control of the Kandy MC with 13 seats and UNP has taken 10 seats. Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), a ruling party ally received one seat in the Council with 2.68% vote.
The UPFA also got control of the Nuwara Eliya MC with a narrow margin of victory to secure 6 of the 10 seats in the MC. The ruling party received 45.90% while the UNP received 42.29% of votes. The upcountry Tamil party, Ceylon Democratic Unity Alliance received 9.05% and secured one seat in the MC.
In Hambanthota, Sri Lankan President's home district, the opposition has managed to secure 42.66% of votes and 6 seats of the 12-member MC while the ruling party received 55.88% votes and 8 seats.
The ruling party has secured clear victories in the other MCs for which results have been released - Gampaha, Anuradhapura, Badulla, Galle, Kurunegala, Matale, Matara and Ratnapura.
The Marxist party Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna has managed to secure one each in Galle and Matara MCs with a vote percentage of 2.55 and 4.04 respectively.
Poll results for Colombo, the most awaited MC, has not been released yet.
Sri Lanka's main opposition UNP wins Colombo MC
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 09, Colombo: Sri Lanka's main opposition United National Party (UNP) won the key local government body, the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC). The UNP secured 24 slots in the CMC by polling 101,920 votes, 43.01% of the total, at Saturday's elections.
Both major political parties launched aggressive campaigns for the Colombo Municipal Council, which has been an opposition UNP stronghold for over 50 years.
The governing United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) managed to secure 16 seats in the Council by polling 77,089 votes or 32.53% of the votes.
The Democratic People's Front (DPF) led by Mano Ganeshan has won six seats, Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) and Democratic Unity Alliance (DUA) have won two seats each and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and two independent groups received one seat each in the in the 53-member CMC.
The ruling party won the Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia MC, other major MC in the Colombo district with 16 seats and the opposition won 11 seats in the Council.
The UPFA has won 21 out of the 23 local government bodies that went into polling yesterday including the Kandy MC which has been another opposition UNP stronghold.
The Muslim-dominated Kalmunai Municipal Council went to Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, an ally of the ruling party, winning 11 seats with 48.99% of votes. The Tamil national Alliance constituent party Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi won 4 seats and the UPFA won 3 seats. The opposition UNP secured one seat with 6.15% of votes.
The UPFA will lose the Colombo MC because its Tamil majority will vote for the UNP ... UNFORTUNATELY!
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Colombo result will have far-reaching implications
President and Gotabhaya’s campaign entry reveals the stakes
By Shamindra Ferdinando
Island.lk
October 8, 2011
The outcome of the battle for the CMC at yesterday’s LG polls will have far reaching impact on both political parties and key personalities, including President Mahinda Rajapaksa, UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, UNP reformists and even UPFA mayoral candidate Milinda Moragoda.
There is a lot at stake for various parties, including the Marxist JVP, now embroiled in a leadership crisis in spite of both factions trying to play down differences, political sources say.
Responding to a query, sources asserted that a defeat for the UNP in Colombo would cause a debilitating setback for incumbent UNP leader’s efforts to consolidate his position in the party, while strengthening the hands of the reformists.
Those seeking to oust Wickremesinghe went to the extent of urging party loyalists to concede their Colombo bastion for the greater good of the party. They launched an advertising campaigning in support of this strategy. This drew an angry reaction from Wickremesinghe, who spearheaded the campaign targeting the Rajapaksas - Mahinda and Gotabhaya.
To the credit of the UNP, the actions, in spite of a row over a move to promote Co-Deputy Leader Karu Jayasuriya as Wickreemsinghe’s successor ahead of nominations, shed their differences to chose veteran UNPer A.J.M. Muzammil as the party’s unanimous choice.
The move promoted an angry Mohammed Maharoof, one-time UNP financier to quit the party and contest Colombo on the UPFA ticket.
Yesterday’s third phase comprised polling for 23 LG bodies in 13 electoral districts leaving two LG bodies in the Vanni East out of the third phase due to the areas still to be cleared of mines.
The UPFA secured 250 LG bodies in the first and second phases, TNA 30, UNP 09, SLMC 04, National Congress (UPFA ally) 02, TULF 02 and Up Country People’s Front (UPFA ally) 01. The JVP failed to secure a single LG body.
Reformists told The Sunday Island that Wickremesinghe’s decision to attack the Rajapaksas for developing only their home base Hambantota district at the expense of other districts had placed their leader Sajith Premadasa, MP, at an unenviable position in the Hambantota district, where he was in charge of the campaign.
Three of the 23 LG bodies in the fray, are situated in the Hambantota district (Hambantota MC, H’tota Pradeshiya Sabha and Sooriyawewa PS).
An irate Premadasa told public meetings in Hambantota and Sooriyawewa that he wouldn’t oppose anyone working for the people of the Hambantota district.
While the Wickremesinghe Camp propagated the view that a victory in Colombo meant members still believed in the incumbent leader, the Reformists are of the view of the party should be revamped regardless of the outcome in Colombo.
Sources said that whatever the conclusion, a major confrontation was expected with the UPFA likely to exploit the situation to its own advantage.
Recalling how the UPFA sabotaged a recent protest outside Sirikotha by the Reformsists, sources alleged that the government was expected to throw its weight behind the incumbent leader.
A veteran SLFPer told The Sunday Island that the government obviously felt Wickremesinghe’s continuation as the UNP leader was advantageous to the UPFA. A change at the UNP top could revitalize the party, still struggling to terms with a series of electoral defeats since the April 2004 parliamentary polls.
Sources said that a UNP victory in Colombo could affect both the President and Defence Secretary, who carried out an unprecedented campaign in Colombo in the run-up to Saturday’s polls.
Colombo result will have far-reaching implications
President and Gotabhaya’s campaign entry reveals the stakes
.....continued.....
Asked whether the UNP expected the Rajapaksa brothers, particularly the Defence Secretary to join the campaign, sources acknowledged that they were somewhat surprised as they were portrayed as the power behind the move to rid slum dwellers from the city and its suburbs.
"We were taken by surprise," a senior UNPer said asserting the UPFA took a major risk by bringing in the Rajapaksas to the campaign in the background of their being vilified as conspirators in a plot to chase the poor out of the city and sell Colombo land to foreign investors.
While the UNP bid to regain CMC had suffered due to the SLMC and the Democratic People’s Front led by Mano Ganeshan contesting on their own, it wouldn’t be advantage to the UPFA. In spite of several rounds of talks, the UPFA failed to persuade the SLMC to contest on the UPFA ticket.
Sources said that the UPFA move turned the CMC poll into a battle between the Rajapaksas and the UNP with Wickremesinghe Camp coming under heavy pressure. They said that the UPFA move could help the ruling coalition secure the CMC, which the SLFP Treasurer Minister Dallas Alahapperuma recently described as an achievable target.
Addressing the media at the final UPFA news briefing ahead of the election, Minister Alahapperuma said that securing CMC couldn’t be impossible for a government which had the wherewithal to crush the LTTE and also secure a two-thirds majority in parliament.
Sources said that the UNP had been further divided over the reformists throwing its weight behind two independent groups contesting Matara and Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte MCs, thereby undermining the UNP campaign.
A UPFA defeat would be another political setback to Moragoda, one-time UNP minister and a key government negotiator in Norwegian-led talks with the LTTE (2002-2003).
Moragoda, who contested Colombo at the last parliamentary polls failed to secure a seat, though during his tenure as the Justice Minister he did significant work regarding rehabilitation of LTTE cadres and law reforms.
A UPFA loss in Colomb would embarrass party higher-ups, particularly because at least one third of the candidates were ex-UNPers, including one-time UNP strongman B. Sirisena Cooray’s son.
Sources said that a poor showing by the JVP, particularly in Colombo could further weaken party leader Amarasinghe’s position. They said that the ongoing crisis couldn’t have erupted at a worse time for the party, which contested the last parliamentary polls on the DNA ticket.
Amarasinghe recently declared that the party wouldn’t go for alliances in the future.
The TNA declared it was taking neutral stand, though many felt the dominant Tamil grouping supported Mano Ganesan’s campaign in Colombo and the Dehiwela Mount Lavinia.
Sources said that the UPFA believed it would sweep the third phase and increase its tally amidst initial preparations for the first Provincial Council polls for the Northern Province early next year. They speculated that the Northern PC poll was likely before March 2012.
Fresh call for Mannar oil bids faces Indian obstacle
By Bandula Sirimanna
SundayTimes.lk
October 9, 2011
Following the discovery of natural gas deposits in the Mannar basin in Sri Lanka’s sea off the northwest coast, the government’s plan to call for more competitive international bids for oil exploration in the remaining five blocks faces obstacles from India.
Diplomatic sources said the obstacles had come up due to a delay in establishing a proposed joint information exchange mechanism and the determination of the new maritime boundary with India.
According to the Joint Declaration issued after President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s official visit to India in November last year, it was proposed that early talks be held to determine the new maritime boundary before offering blocks for international bids for oil exploration in the Mannar basin.
Last week, President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Cairn Lanka (Pvt) Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cairn India Ltd., announced the natural gas discovery at a depth of 1,354m in the first well that was drilled.
Petroleum Industries Minister Susil Premajayantha told the media they would soon call for international bids to explore for oil in the remaining five blocks.
Diplomatic sources said this call without talks on the maritime boundary issue with India ran contrary to the proposal in the joint declaration made last year.
The Joint Declaration says, “The Sri Lanka side proposed discussions on establishing a joint information mechanism on the possibility of oil and gas fields straddling the India-Sri Lanka Maritime Boundary. The Prime Minister of India assured the President of Sri Lanka that this proposal would receive the Government of India’s attention and the matter could be discussed further between the two sides”.
When asked for comments on the issue, Minister Premajayantha said he was unaware about such
proposal would receive the Government of India’s attention and the matter could be discussed further between the two sides”.
When asked for comments on the issue, Minister Premajayantha said he was unaware about such a proposal made by India last year. However he noted that India was given a block in the Mannar basin to carry out oil exploration, but it had so far not started work.
There was no agreement to exchange details of oil exploration with India and it was only a proposal, he said. The minister said the Petroleum Resources Secretariat coming under the purview of the President was entrusted with the task of oil exploration and related matters. Sri Lanka as a sovereign country had the liberty to call for international bids for oil exploration, he said.
But he noted that as friendly neighbours Sri Lanka had no objections in exchanging information with India on the progress of oil exploration. Mr. Premajayantha said the discovery was a great boon to Sri Lanka and the country would be able to utilize its natural gas to produce electricity, LP gas for domestic purposes, urea at lower costs, and also as an alternative fuel to run vehicles.
The minister said the government was optimistic that the project would be commercially successful but it would take 18 to 24 months to start commercial production. Officials said Cairn had set aside more than US $100 million as commitment towards exploration in Sri Lanka and had already spent about $50 million.
Fresh call for Mannar oil bids faces Indian obstacle
.....continued.....
The diplomatic sources said non-consideration of the maritime boundary agreement could cause a serious dispute with India if commercially exploitable oil or gas deposits were located on the Sri Lankan side of the maritime boundary.
The non-resolution of this boundary issue vis-a-vis offshore oil exploration was the main reason why the major international oil exploration companies did not respond to the earlier call for bids although they attended roadshows to promote oil exploration in Sri Lanka.
There are nearly 30 operating wells on the Indian side of the Cauvery Basin, and Calgary-based Bengal Energy has exploration rights for 1,362 sq km there. Sri Lanka was hopeful that oil exploration would be successful on its side of the field.
BS! NO ONE will STARVE in SRi Lanka ... the Govt of Sri Lanka will ENSURE that .... as they have done since Sri Lanka became a sovereign nation in 1948!
Without repairing the ROADS & BRIDGES that the retreating LTTE destroyed, NO aid can be brought to the affected people returned to their homes, or enable them to revive their finances and lives.
Without those ROADS & BRIDGES, they can't travel to work, to hospitals, to post offices etc, enable customers to come to their shops, or bring their products to market, to earn a living.
The people of the Vanni can now send their agricultural products to markets in the South and earn a living from their land. Those shops lining the repaired shining new A9 road are EVIDENCE of its EFFECTIVENESS in restoring the economy of the North upto and beyond that of 30 years ago.
The A9 is just but ONE of MANY MANY other RECONSTRUCTED roads & bridges elsewhere in the North helping to revive the war-affected North.
We don't see ANY PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE constructed by the LTTE for the benefit of the people, with the cart loads of funds sent them by the Tamil Diaspora.
We see only WAR CEMETERIES for the people, and LUXURY MANSIONS for the LTTE leaders!
Only a CARING Government can DEVELOP ESSENTIAL INFRASTUCTURE that individuals cannot build by themselves.
Let us not BELITTLE the TRULY AMAZING DEVELOPMENT that this Govt has done!
.............
Struggling Beside the Shining New Road
By Amantha Perera
IpsNews.net
COLOMBO, Oct 8, 2011 (IPS) - The sun’s rays bouncing off the A9 highway give it a shining glow. Once known as Sri Lanka’s ‘highway of death’, the road has come a long way from those macabre associations.
It now represents the keen, though uneven, post-war development currently under way in the areas formerly controlled by the recently defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
For 100 kilometres the A9 cuts right through the Northern Vanni region, where, till the end of the civil war in May 2009, some of the country’s bloodiest battles were waged.
Almost 3,000 people were killed between 1997 and 1999 as government forces battled the separatist LTTE for control of that 100 km stretch of road.
Development is taking place at great speed on either side – small hotels, shops and eateries dot the highway at frequent intervals and gigantic billboards hawk everything from baby food to men’s skin whitening cream, on roadsides that housed only artillery shells not so long ago.
Commuters on the A9 might be tempted to believe that the tide has turned for tens of thousands of civilians in the area who bore the brunt of the civil war for over two-and-a-half decades.
But that impression is far from reality on the ground in the Vanni, according to humanitarian agencies working in the region. Not so far from the A9, life is still a bitter struggle.
The United Nations’ latest statistics indicate that over 380,000 civilians had returned to the region by the end of August, including 213,000 civilians who fled the last years of fighting from 2006 to 2009 and roughly 168,000 who made the flight before that.
But while projects like the A9 highway are swallowing up millions, precious little has been allocated to resettlement and rehabilitation.
Jagath Abeysinghe, president of the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society (SLRC), told IPS that at least 140,000- 160,000 homes were required to house returning internally displaced persons (IDPs), a figure quoted by the UN as well.
In contrast, the most recent UN Joint Humanitarian and Early Recovery Update released on Sep. 27 stated that up until the end of August, two years and three months after the war ended, only 34,500 houses were being constructed or repaired. To date, only 9,500 new houses have been completed in the Vanni, with plans to build just 26,700 more.
Struggling Beside the Shining New Road
.....continued 1....
The Indian government has made the biggest commitment on paper, with promises to build 50,000 new homes. Recently the Sri Lankan government made an appeal for the second tranche of that promised funding, when the first 10,000 homes were nearing completion, but the money has not yet been received.
The Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED) also warned that severe food shortages in the region could compound the precarious humanitarian situation.
Quoting the World Food Programme (WFP)’s research, the agency said that nearly half the population of the Vanni is currently facing moderate to severe food insecurity.
"With the scaling down of food assistance, it is likely that food security conditions will deteriorate in the coming months in the (Vanni’s interior Mulaithivu District)," the agency added.
In fact, the entire Northern Province is teetering on the edge of a full-blown crisis. IPS recently gained access to a WFP assessment survey, which reveals that 60 percent of the population in the North are food insecure.
Additionally, half the people in the North live below the national poverty line and owe debt amounting to six months’ earnings.
WFP officials told IPS that these high levels of debt, coupled with the lack of earning capacity to secure basic food items, was a major concern. With unemployment stagnant at over 20 percent and underemployment well over 30 percent, a decrease in aid assistance bodes very badly for the people of Vanni.
Meanwhile, the controversial post-war political climate has led to an increasingly unstable pool of development funds.
The UN and the Sri Lankan government made a joint appeal to the international community earlier this year for 289 million dollars for redevelopment work in the North. Eight months later, a mere 26 percent of that amount, or 76 million dollars, has been received.
Abeysinghe also believes that donors have lost sight of the humanitarian crisis by getting too embroiled in ongoing political wrangling between the Sri Lankan government and international heavyweights like the governments of the U.S., UK and the European Union, who are all pushing for a full investigation into possible laws of war violations during the last stages of Sri Lanka’s civil war.
"My appeal to donors is not to forget the immense needs of these people by focusing solely on the nature and conduct of the war," Abeysinghe told IPS.
Yet donors have already cut back on desperately needed services. The International Migration Organisation, for example, recently suspended an ambulance service that had operated in the region for two-and-a-half years.
Struggling Beside the Shining New Road
....continued 2....
Government officials working in the North told IPS that funding for big infrastructure projects was plentiful, whereas a scarcity of resources for helping individual households and boosting job creation remained a serious concern.
"We recently got new funding for the irrigation works," Anthonypillai Vinothraja, provincial project manager for the Ministry of Economic Development in the Northern Province, told IPS.
"It is getting companies to start up job creating ventures where we feel we need more help," he added.
Furthermore, experts believe that housing and roads alone will not suffice to wrest a population from the hardships wrought by decades of war. "We need to give these people hope that life is better and will be even brighter," Vinothraja told IPS.
Abeysinghe also warned that if the international community did not take note of this watershed moment in the North, the long-term consequences of underdevelopment could be drastic.
"One of the reasons the war erupted in the first place was because people felt disillusioned; what will stop the same thing from happening 10 or 20 years from now, if this generation also feels frustrated?" he asked, alluding to possible tensions caused by a lack of jobs and income, glaring wealth disparities and marginalisation.
"The peace dividend cannot be limited to a road or irrigation network," he added. (END)
New plant to produce 500 MPa and above rods: Steel Corp to launch $ 80 m steel village
by Lalin FERNANDOPULLE
SundayObserver.lk
October 09, 2011
Construction material manufacturers are expediting operations to capitalise on the construction boom in the country following mega projects being rolled out by multinational companies.
Steel rod manufacturers are among the beneficiaries of the expansion in the construction industry which is a major contributor to the economic growth of the country.
Ceylon Steel Corporation (CSCL) will launch the $ 28 m state-of-the-art Quenching Tempered Bar (QTB) plant in Athurugiriya this year.
CSCL Director, Dammika Lokuwithana said that the company will manufacture 500 and above MPa (Mega Pascal) yield strength bars at its mill which will be commissioned next month. The company will manufacture around 100,000 MT of steel rods per annum and then increase its capacity upto 250,000 MT per annum.
“There is a huge demand for authentic steel bars in the country and we are confident that we could meet the demand with solid stuff produced at our modern plant”, Lokuwithana said.
According to construction industry standards, the minimum strength of a rod should be 460 MPa but with the expansion in high-rise buildings the minimum strength has been increased to 500 MPa according to global standards.
Construction industry experts said that the 460 MPa strength of a bar is not sufficient for multi-storey constructions which require more strength for durability.
Industry experts said that sub standard steel bars were proliferating the market, causing a colossal damage to the construction industry.
“The loss to the construction sector could be enormous due to the use of inferior material. Spot fines should be imposed on those who try to fleece consumers”, Construction Chamber sources said.
Many constructions have been a failure in the recent past due to the use of substandard building material.
An underpass on the Southern Express Highway collapsed due to the use of inferior construction material according to media reports.
The construction industry was adversely affected by the intrusion of low quality cement imported to the country. The scarcity of cement was a major blow to the industry.
Certain steel rod manufacturers have sought political refuge to continue with their business despite repeated warnings and fines to stop substandard production.
CSCL produces 460 MPa strength bars using the Cold Twisted Bar (CTB) technology which will be upgraded to meet world standards.
The new plant will help save energy and would cause minimum damage to the environment”, Lokuwithana said.
CSCL has already launched a massive $ 80 m project to set up a modern steel village on the 160-acre land to fulfil the steel product needs of the country.
The Ceylon Steel Corporation was set up in 1961. The company was sold to the Doosan Group, a South Korean company which renamed it as Ceylon Heavy Industries and Construction Co. (CHICO).
The debt riddled business under the Koreans was turned into a profitable venture under the stewardship of Nandana Lokuwithana, a Sri Lankan businessman with steel and construction related interests in the UAE.
He is the chairman of Onyx Group, a large construction company in the UAE. CSCL is today the largest steel manufacturers in the country with a wide distribution network. CSCL, Business Development Manager Sanath Niroshan said the company will venture into the export market next year.
New Kandy District airport may be located at Kundasale.
Jayawewa!
...........
Sri Lanka Central Provincial Council plans to set up the proposed domestic airport in Kundasale
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 09, Kandy: The Central Provincial Council of Sri Lanka is exploring the possibility of constructing the domestic airport proposed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa in the Kundasale area.
President Rajapaksa last week said that a domestic airport would be set up in the Kandy District and called on the Chief Minister of the Central PC to allocate a necessary land for the project.
Central Province Chief Minister Sarath Ekanayake has said that he has been asked to locate a suitable land for the project and was therefore looking at Kundasale as an option. However, he has said that the location has not yet been confirmed.
He has added that the extent of the land to be allocated for the project was also to be decided.
According to Ekanayake, the land would have to be at least 60 yards in order to accommodate the airstrip.
If Tamil parties contribute CONSTRUCTIVELY to the CMC ... we welcome their participation.
Unfortunately, Mano Ganeshan's support for the LTTE terrorists in the past does not augur well for such an outcome.
Mano Ganeshan, a committed SEPARATIST, will continue to be a barrier to NATIONAL UNITY.
................
Sri Lanka Opposition Leader holds talks with minority Tamil party for majority in Colombo Municipal council
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 09, Colombo: Opposition Leader of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremasinghe who is also the leader of the United National Party (UNP) that defended power in its traditional vote base Colombo Municipal Council held talks with a minority Tamil party to consolidate power in the council.
The opposition party although grabbed power in Colombo Municipal Council at yesterday's local government elections is in short of majority.
UNP leader Ranil Wickremasinghe this morning held crucial talks with the leader of the Democratic People's Front Mano Ganeshan whose party won six seats in the council.
UNP sources say that Ganeshan has expressed willingness to extend support to the UNP rule of the Council in crucial moments.
UNP which won 24 seats wants two more seats to consolidate power in 53-seat Colombo Municipal Council. Ruling United People's Freedom Alliance won 16 seats in the council.
Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) and Democratic Unity Alliance (DUA) have won two seats each and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and two independent groups received one seat each in the in the Council.
Sri Lanka invites expatriate doctors to return to serve the country
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 11, Colombo: Sri Lanka Minister of Health Maithripala Sirisena says that 47 state medical centers are closed in the country due to shortage of doctors while 20,000 Sri Lankan doctors are in service in foreign countries.
The Minister invites the expatriate doctors to return to the country and provide their services to the countrymen.
Of these Sri Lankan doctors, 2,500 are in the UK, 1,500 are in Australia and 3,750 are in US, the Minister said addressing a function held in Colombo.
The vast majority of these doctors benefitted from the free education provided with the people's money, said the Minister.
Sri Lanka's Senok orders another 10 wind turbine generators for 21 MW of power
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 11, Colombo: Sri Lanka's wind power generator, Senok has placed an order for 10 units of wind turbine generators from the Wind turbine manufacturer Suzlon Energy Ltd. to provide 21 MW of wind power capacity, Suzlon said in a press release today.
Suzlon Energy, based in Pune, India, has won a repeat order from Senok to supply ten units of its S88 - 2.1 MW wind turbine generators. The new order takes Senok's wind portfolio to over 31 MW.
The company is to build two more wind-power plants in two phases to be completed in May 2012. Both wind farms will supply energy to Sri Lanka's national grid.
The S88 - 2.1 MW wind turbine generators are designed for a medium wind speed regime and can withstand extreme conditions and operate effectively with lower maintenance cost.
SENOK Wind Power Pvt. Ltd. (WPP), a SENOK Group company commissioned the first 10MW wind power plant in Kalpitiya in Puttalam district on the northwestern coast of Sri Lanka in June 2010.
Suzlon has supplied the earlier 10 MW wind power generators to the Senok Group. The project was the first wind power plant in Sri Lanka.
President of the Senok Group Noel Selvanayagam has said that the new order underlines Senok Group's strategic focus on wind energy.
"We take pride in being the pioneer in commercial wind power projects in Sri Lanka. We are happy to once again partner with Suzlon for this new project and count on Suzlon�s collaborative approach and time tested service capabilities to continue our endeavor towards a greener tomorrow," he has said.
Speaking of the order, Chairman and Managing Director, of Suzlon Group, Tulsi R. Tanti has said that Sri Lanka has considerable potential for wind, and a great need for power to drive its economic growth.
"We at Suzlon look forward to building great synergies in partnership with the Senok Group in Sri Lanka," the Chairman has said.
Liam Fox investigation may be the TIP OF THE ICEBERG of INVESTIGATIONS of POLITICAL LEADERS OF SEVERAL COUNTRIES CORRUPTED by LTTE Money!
SLEEP with the TIGER,
EATEN by the TIGER!
................
SL expects to benefit from Fox probe fallout
By Shamindra Ferdinando
Island.lk<
October 11, 2011
In the wake of UK Defence Secretary Liam Fox being investigated for his alleged clandestine dealings with a private finance firm, the Sri Lanka government believes the British should investigate the relationship between members of the UK parliament and LTTE front organizations based in the UK and other EU countries.
British Premier David Cameron ordered the investigation, close on the heels of the British print media publishing a photograph of Fox with controversial broker Adam Werritty on an official ministerial visit to Colombo to deliver the fifth Kadirgamar Memorial Lecture.
Werritty is alleged to have arranged a meeting between Dr. Fox and the Chief Executive of the private finance firm, which wanted the politician to speak on its behalf at the Cabinet.
Government sources told The Island that Europe-based LTTE representatives had been in constant touch with British politicians, including former Premier Gordon Brown and former Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Responding to a query, sources said that in spite of the LTTE being a proscribed organization in the UK, both Labour and Conservatives had been closely working with those who represented the LTTE’s interests.
Sources said that the LTTE had influenced members of the British parliament to take up human rights violations in Sri Lanka and Jammu and Kashmir in the run-up to the recently concluded UNGA in New York, where Canada targeted Sri Lanka during the general debate on Sept. 26.
Asked whether those backing the LTTE had been identified, sources said that their identities were known. They had raised questions in the British parliament and issued a statement on behalf of the LTTE in the guise of representing British voters of Sri Lankan origin, sources said. They had backed LTTE protests, including a major campaign in May 2009 to pressure UK intervention in Sri Lanka. That led to the then Foreign Secretary Miliband and his French counterpart Bernard Kouchner demanding an immediate end to the successful Sri Lankan offensive.
Ministerial sources said that some MPs had gone to the extent of protesting against the British decision to expel those bogus Tamil asylum seekers. Sources alleged that British political parties had turned a blind eye to what was going on between LTTE front organizations and members of the European Parliament and various other parliaments in Canada, UK and Australia.
Sources acknowledged that in spite of some Australian MPs playing ball with the LTTE, the Australian government had basically taken a tough stand, though the same couldn’t be said about Canada and the UK.
An intelligence sources told The Island had foreign governments responded in the same manner that the UK ordered an investigation targeting Dr. Fox several dozen members of different parliaments could be in serious trouble. The official said that the LTTE continued its operations, though being proscribed in 32 countries.
Ministerial sources said that the recent move by Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand at the Annual Commonwealth Foreign Ministers Meeting (CFAMM) and the so-called Eminent Persons Group (EPG), to bring in two far reaching proposals at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) late this month, were aimed at Sri Lanka. Asked whether the LTTE lobby had been behind the move, sources said that there couldn’t have been any other reason other than the LTTE factor. Among the controversial proposals is the appointment of a Commonwealth Commissioner for Democracy and the Rule of Law.
Won't listen to the Police?
Let them face the SL Army!
Bravo!
...............
‘Army to assist Police in handling underworld’
By Sandasen Marasinghe
DailyNews.lk
October 12, 2011
Police have been instructed to obtain the support of the Army to arrest underworld figures, said Director General of the Media Centre for National Security Lakshman Hulugalla yesterday.
Lakshman Hulugalla
He said authorities had discussed at several meetings the matter of controlling the menace of unauthorized weapons, thuggery and the underworld.
The Army has also been instructed to extend its fullest support to the Police when requested to control anti-social elements and activities.
Hulugalla further said the Army has not been instructed to take action against underworld figures or thugs.
He added that the government has already lifted the Emergency regulations. “No piece of legislation has been enforced to make the Army take action against underworld figures or thugs by themselves and this a duty which comes under the ambit of the Police,” he added.
When contacted, Military Spokesperson Brigadier Nishantha Hapuarachchi said they have been instructed to support the Police whenever they need the support of the Army. But no communique has been delivered to them by the authorities to take actions on their own,he said.
And WHY do we need the Army?
Because terrorists and criminals are carrying ASSAULT WEAPONS ...
That's WHY!
Until these weapons are made UNAVAILABLE and THUGS of all kinds are COMPELLED TO BREAK ROCKS IN PRISON ... they need to be confronted by the BEST-ARMED SECURITY FORCES we have!
................
Five more arrested over Sri Lanka election day shootout
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 11, Colombo: Sri Lanka police have arrested five more suspects on Monday in Colombo and the outskirts over the election day shooting in a suburb of the Sri Lankan capital.
The gun battle between two groups of supporters of the ruling United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) in Mulleriyawa on last Saturday (08) claimed the lives of four people including a former ruling party legislator, Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra.
The shooting injured five more people, one of whom succumbed to his injuries yesterday. Among the injured is the ruling party parliamentarian Duminda Silva receiving treatment on life support at the Sri Jayawardenapura Hospital.
The police earlier arrested a suspect along with 12 pistols, two revolvers and two T-56 weapons.
The Criminal Investigations Department is conducting comprehensive inquiries and the government has said the investigation would be impartial.
Police Media Spokesman SSP Maxi Procter has said that accordingly inquiries into the Mulleriyawa shoot out were being broad based.
Only Sri Lankan Tamils from POOR India will return to Sri Lanka to get FREE Govt Handouts and benefit from the economic advantages of a RESURGENT Sri Lanka.
The Hundreds of Thousands ... even Millions ... of ILLEGAL economic migrants who were unloaded by the LTTE human smugglers as FAKE REFUGEES on unsuspecting Western Countries to serve as a TERRORIST TAX BASE .... WILL NOT RETURN to Sri Lanka.
For this SMALL MERCY of being spared the return of hordes of TERRORIST SUPPORTING EELAMISTS ... we are ETERNALLY GRATEFUL to the Sun God, the very late UNLAMENTED Velupillai Prabhakaran, who sent them there.
Sri Lanka needs only citizens who LOVE Sri Lanka and are committed to ONE INDIVISIBLE Sri Lanka.
Others can ply their terrorist agenda, carving out racist apartheid Tamil Homelands in unsuspecting Western Countries, and continue to pay "protection money" to the surviving lieutenants of the Sun God.
Good Riddance to terrorist RUBBISH, I say!
..............
Sri Lankan refugees returning from India arrive in Colombo
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 12, Colombo: The first batch of Sri Lankan refugees returning from India by sea arrived in Colombo port today after fleeing the country decades ago due to the separatist war between the government forces and Tamil Tiger terrorists.
The small group of 37 refugees from 15 families was received at a welcoming ceremony held at the port under the aegis of Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa. Former rebel leader of Eastern Province turned Deputy Minister of Resettlement Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan was also at the port to greet the arrivals.
Sri Lankan government officials, port and shipping authorities and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) organized the function.
The returns are part of a voluntary, facilitated repatriation programme, supported by the governments of both India and Sri Lanka.
A press release from UNHCR said many refugees living in camps in India have expressed desire to return by the ferry as they can transport their household possessions with them on a sea journey. Each person could bring up to 150 kilograms of their belongings on the ferry that runs between the Tuticorin port in India and Colombo port in Sri Lanka.
The refugees upon their return in the country receive a reintegration grant and transport allowance to help them get back to their homes.
Once the returnees reach their final destination in the country, they can approach one of UNHCR's five offices in the North and East to obtain a kit of basic household supplies.
The UN agency says since the conflict ended in May 2009, Sri Lankan refugees have been steadily returning back to their home country, mainly from India with a few from other countries. Over 1,400 refugees have returned so far this year, compared to 2,054 refugees in 2010.
According to Indian Government figures, some 69,000 Sri Lankan refugees were living in 112 camps in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. UNHCR's most recent statistics showed there were 141,063 Sri Lankan refugees in 65 countries, with the majority in India, followed by France, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Australia, Malaysia, the United States and Italy.
>Sri Lanka Local Government Election Results ... 10/08/2011
COLOMBO DISTRICT
Colombo Municipal Council
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United National Party 101,920 43.01% 24
United People's Freedom Alliance 77,089 32.53% 16
Democratic Peoples Front 26,229 11.07% 6
Sri Lanka Muslim Congress 9,979 4.21% 2
Democratic Unity Alliance 7,830 3.30% 2
Independent Group 2 4,085 1.72% 1
People's Liberation Front 3,162 1.33% 1
Independent Group 1 2,962 1.25% 1
Independent Group 9 1,968 0.83% -
Independent Group 8 1,133 0.48%
Jana Setha Peramuna 384 0.16%
Independent Group 10 46 0.02%
Patriotic National Front 42 0.02%
Independent Group 4 33 0.01%
Ceylon Democratic Unity Allance 32 0.01%
Independent Group 7 27 0.01%
Independent Group 6 22 0.01%
Independent Group 3 17 0.01%
Independent Group 5 16 0.01%
Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia Municipal Council
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 39,812 52.55% 16
United National Party 31,082 41.02% 11
Democratic Peoples Frontt 2,167 2.86% 1
People's Liberation Front 1,568 2.07% 1
Independent Group 5 647 0.85% -
Jana Setha Peramuna 287 0.38%
Independent Group 1 140 0.18%
Independent Group 6 46 0.06%
Independent Group 2 6 0.01%
Independent Group 4 6 0.01%
Independent Group 3 4 0.01%
Patriotic National Front 2 %
Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte Municipal Council
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 26,723 63.57% 13
United National Party 10,830 25.76% 5
Independent Group 3 2,178 5.18% 1
Lanka Sama Samaja Party 1,291 3.07% 1
People's Liberation Front 942 2.24% 0
Independent Group 6 28 0.07% 0
Independent Group 1 17 0.04% 0
Independent Group 2 7 0.02% 0
Independent Group 4 7 0.02% 0
Patriotic National Front 6 0.01% 0
Independent Group 5 5 0.01% 0
Moratuwa Municipal Council
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 45,286 58.72% 18
United National Party 25,224 32.70% 9
Independent Group 1 3,478 4.51% 1
People's Liberation Front 1,585 2.06% 1
Independent Group 2 1,232 1.60%
Nawa Sama Samaja Party 300 0.39%
Jana Setha Peramuna 12 0.02%
Independent Group 3 8 0.01%
Patriotic National Front 3 %
Kolonnawa Urban Council
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 11,303 46.95% 6
United National Party 10,667 44.31% 4
Democratic Peoples Front 938 3.90% 1
Sri Lanka Muslim Congress 565 2.35% 0
People's Liberation Front 477 1.98% 0
Independent Group 1 106 0.44% 0
Independent Group 3 14 0.06% 0
Jana Setha Peramuna 5 0.02% 0
Independent Group 2 0 % 0
Kotikawatte-Mulleriyawa Pradeshiya Sabha
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 37,998 73.66% 16
United National Party 12,269 23.78% 5
People's Liberation Front 1,285 2.49% 0
Jana Setha Peramuna 7 0.01% 0
Independent Group 2 7 0.01% 0
Patriotic National Front 5 0.01% 0
Independent Group 3 5 0.01% 0
Independent Group 4 5 0.01% 0
Independent Group 1 4 0.01% 0
Sri Lanka Local Government Election Results ... 10/08/2011
AMPARA DISTRICT
Kalmunai Municipal Council
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
Sri Lanka Muslim Congress 22,356 48.99% 11
Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi 9,911 21.72% 4
United People's Freedom Alliance 8,524 18.68% 3
United National Party 2,805 6.15% 1
Independent Group 4 799 1.75% 0
Independent Group 1 587 1.29% 0
Eelavar Democratic Front 369 0.81% 0
People's Liberation Front 122 0.27% 0
Akila Ilankai Tamil United Front 55 0.12% 0
Jana Setha Peramuna 33 0.07% 0
Patriotic National Front 24 0.05% 0
Independent Group 6 14 0.03% 0
Independent Group 5 10 0.02% 0
Independent Group 7 10 0.02% 0
Independent Group 2 9 0.02% 0
Independent Group 3 3 0.01% 0
Independent Group 8 1 % 0
Sri Lanka Local Government Election Results ... 10/08/2011
ANURADHAPURA DISTRICT
Anuradhapura Municipal Council
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 14,849 68.97% 10
United National Party 5,028 23.35% 3
People's Liberation Front 853 3.96% 0
Independent Group 1 341 1.58% 0
Independent Group 2 237 1.10% 0
Democratic Left Front 197 0.91% 0
Eksath Lanka Maha Sabha 12 0.06% 0
Independent Group 3 8 0.04% 0
Jana Setha Peramuna 6 0.03% 0
Sri Lanka Local Government Election Results ... 10/08/2011
BADULLA DISTRICT
Badulla Municipal Council
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 13,337 63.25% 10
United National Party 6,982 33.11% 5
People's Liberation Front 453 2.15% 0
Up-Country People's Front 293 1.39% 0
Eksath Lanka Maha Sabha 7 0.03% 0
Patriotic National Front 4 0.02% 0
Independent Grop 1 4 0.02% 0
Independent Grop 2 4 0.02% 0
Jana Setha Peramuna 2 0.01% 0
Ruhunu Janatha Party 0 % 0
Sri Lanka Local Government Election Results ... 10/08/2011
GALLE DISTRICT
Galle Municipal Council
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 23,539 55.39% 11
United National Party 16,137 37.97% 7
People's Liberation Front 1,085 2.55% 1
Sri Lanka Muslim Congress 903 2.13% 0
Patriotic National Front 677 1.59% 0
Independent Group 3 87 0.20% 0
Jana Setha Peramuna 17 0.04% 0
Independent Group 4 10 0.02% 0
Eksath Lanka Maha Sabha 9 0.02% 0
Independent Group 6 9 0.02% 0
Independent Group 2 8 0.02% 0
Independent Group 1 6 0.01% 0
Ruhunu Janatha Party 4 0.01% 0
Independent Group 5 3 0.01% 0
Sri Lanka Local Government Election Results ... 10/08/2011
GAMPAHA DISTRICT
Negombo Municipal Council
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 37,232 58.17% 16
United National Party 24,712 38.61% 9
Sri Lanka Muslim Congress 1,588 2.48% 1
People's Liberation Front 396 0.62% 0
United Democratic Front 20 0.03% 0
Eksath Lanka Maha Sabha 11 0.02% 0
Ruhunu Janatha Party 10 0.02% 0
Independent Group 2 10 0.02% 0
Independent Group 1 8 0.01% 0
Independent Group 4 8 0.01% 0
Jana Setha Peramuna 7 0.01% 0
Patriotic National Front 1 % 0
Independent Group 3 1 % 0
Gampaha Municipal Council
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 22,679 74.08% 14
United National Party 6,478 21.16% 3
Independent Group 3 835 2.73% 1
People's Liberation Front 543 1.77% 0
Jana Setha Peramuna 58 0.19% 0
Independent Group 2 6 0.02% 0
United Democratic Front 5 0.02% 0
Independent Group 1 3 0.01% 0
Independent Group 4 3 0.01% 0
Patriotic National Front 2 0.01% 0
Ruhunu Janatha Party 1 % 0
Eksath Lanka Maha Sabha 0 % 0
Sri Lanka Local Government Election Results ... 10/08/2011
HAMBANTOTA DISTRICT
Hambantota Municipal Council
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 6,183 55.88% 8
United National Party 4,742 42.86% 4
People's Liberation Front 126 1.14% 0
Eksath Lanka Maha Sabha 8 0.07% 0
Jana Setha Peramuna 1 0.01% 0
Nawa Sama Samaja Party 1 0.01% 0
Ruhunu Janatha Party 1 0.01% 0
Independent Group 1 1 0.01% 0
Independent Group 3 1 0.01% 0
Independent Group 2 0 % 0
Independent Group 4 0 % 0
Suriyawewa Pradeshiya Sabha
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 14,279 69.56% 4
United National Party 5,388 26.25% 1
People's Liberation Front 838 4.08% 0
Eksath Lanka Maha Sabha 12 0.06% 0
Independent Group 5 0.02% 0
Jana Setha Peramuna 3 0.01% 0
Patriotic National Front 2 0.01% 0
Ruhunu Janatha Party 2 0.01% 0
Hambantota Pradeshiya Sabha
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 11,836 71.79% 6
United National Party 3,788 22.97% 1
People's Liberation Front 853 5.17% 0
Jana Setha Peramuna 4 0.02% 0
Independent Group 1 3 0.02% 0
Independent Group 2 4 0.02% 0
Sri Lanka Local Government Election Results ... 10/08/2011
KANDY DISTRICT
Kandy Municipal Council
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 23,189 49.78% 13
United National Party 20,087 43.12% 10
Sri Lanka Muslim Congress 1,248 2.68% 1
People's Liberation Front 746 1.60% 0
Independent Group 4 711 1.53% 0
Okkoma Wasiyo Okkoma Rajawaru Sanvidanaya 233 0.50% 0
Independent Group 1 228 0.49% 0
United Socialist Party 99 0.21% 0
Independent Group 2 18 0.04% 0
Patriotic National Front 10 0.02% 0
Independent Group 5 8 0.02% 0
Independent Group 3 2 0% 0
Kundasale Pradeshiya Sabha
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 34,488 61.23% 14
United National Party 16,934 30.06% 6
Independent Group 2,128 3.78% 1
People's Liberation Front 1,561 2.77% 1
Sri Lanka Muslim Congress 1,197 2.13% 0
Jana Setha Peramuna 10 0.02% 0
Ruhunu Janatha Party 9 0.02% 0
Kandy Gravets and Gangawata Korale Pradeshiya Sabha
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 14,083 56.02% 8
United National Party 9,418 37.47% 4
Independent Group 3 1,157 4.60% 0
People's Liberation Front 425 1.69% 0
Okkoma Wasiyo Okkoma Rajawaru Sanvidanaya 29 0.12% 0
Eksath Lanka Maha Sabha 8 0.03% 0
Patriotic National Front 7 0.03% 0
Independent Group 1 6 0.02% 0
Jana Setha Peramuna 4 0.02% 0
Independent Group 2 1 % 0
Sri Lanka Local Government Election Results ... 10/08/2011
MATALE DISTRICT
Matale Municipal Council
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 11,407 64.80% 9
United National Party 4,751 26.99% 3
Independent Group 5 552 3.14% 1
Patriotic National Front 505 2.87% 0
People's Liberation Front 180 1.02% 0
Independent Group 4 90 0.51% 0
Independent Group 2 70 0.40% 0
Our National Front 15 0.09% 0
Independent Group 1 12 0.07% 0
Eksath Lanka Maha Sabha 5 0.03% 0
Independent Group 7 5 0.03% 0
Independent Group 6 4 0.02% 0
Jana Setha Peramuna 3 0.02% 0
Independent Group 3 3 0.02% 0
Ruhunu Janatha Party 1 0.01% 0
Sri Lanka Local Government Election Results ... 10/08/2011
KURUNEGALA DISTRICT
Kurunegala Municipal Council
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 8,578 62.70% 8
United National Party 4,838 35.36% 4
People's Liberation Front 192 1.40% 0
Independent Group 9 39 0.29% 0
Green Party Sri Lanka 23 0.17% 0
Eksath Lanka Maha Sabha 4 0.03% 0
Independent Group 1 3 0.02% 0
Independent Group 6 2 0.01% 0
Independent Group 2 1 0.01% 0
Independent Group 3 1 0.01% 0
Independent Group 8 1 0.01% 0
Jana Setha Peramuna - -% -
Ruhunu Janatha Party - -% -
Independent Group 4 - -% -
Independent Group 5 - -% -
Independent Group 7 - -% -
Sri Lanka Local Government Election Results ... 10/08/2011
MATARA DISTRICT
Matara Municipal Council
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 20,681 57.68% 9
United National Party 12,619 35.20% 5
People's Liberation Front 1,449 4.04% 1
Independent Group 1 1,056 2.95% 0
Our National Front 18 0.05% 0
Jana Setha Peramuna 10 0.03% 0
People's Liberation Solidarity Front 8 0.02% 0
Ruhunu Janatha Party 8 0.02% 0
Independent Group 2 5 0.01% 0
Sri Lanka Local Government Election Results ... 10/08/2011
NUWARAELIYA DISTRICT
Nuwara-Eliya Municipal Council
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 6,275 45.90% 6
United National Party 5,781 42.29% 3
Ceylon Democratic Unity Alliance 1,237 9.05% 1
Sri Lanka Muslim Congress 187 1.37% 0
Independent Group 4 95 0.69% 0
Independent Group 2 79 0.58% 0
Ruhunu Janatha Party 8 0.06% 0
Independent Group 6 6 0.04% 0
Independent Group 5 2 0.01% 0
Independent Group 1 - % 0
Independent Group 3 - % 0
Sri Lanka Local Government Election Results ... 10/08/2011
RATNAPURA DISTRICT
Ratnapura Municipal Council
PARTY NAME VOTES OBTAINED PERCENTAGE SEATS
United People's Freedom Alliance 15,626 65.38% 11
United National Party 6,820 28.54% 4
Ceylon Worker's Congress (P.Wing) 623 2.61% 0
Independent Group 2 546 2.28% 0
People's Liberation Front 186 0.78% 0
The Liberal Party 57 0.24% 0
Independent Group 3 20 0.08% 0
Nawa Sama Samaja Party 10 0.04% 0
Eksath Lanka Maha Sabha 3 0.01% 0
Independent Group 1 3 0.01% 0
Independent Group 5 2 0.01% 0
Jana Setha Peramuna 1 0% 0
Patriotic National Front 1 0% 0
Ruhunu Janatha Party 1 0% 0
Independent Group 4 1 0% 0
Establishment of STRONGER RELATIONS with VIETNAM is IMPORTANT for Sri Lanka.
This relationship should be NURTURED into a STRONG ALLIANCE based on shared economic, political, regional security, shipping and religious links.
Vietnam will be an Economically & Militarily POWERFUL NATION in the future.
We have a GROUND FLOOR OPPORTUNITY here to ELEVATE our EXISTING CORDIAL RELATIONSHIP to a HIGHER LEVEL OF SHARED ESSENTIAL INTERESTS.
Jayawewa!
.............
Vietnam President to visit Sri Lanka tomorrow, open embassy in Colombo
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 12, Colombo: The President of Vietnam, Truong Tan Sang, accompanied by his wife and a high-powered business delegation is scheduled to visit Sri Lanka from October 13-15 on an invitation extended by his Sri Lankan counterpart President Mahinda Rajapaksa , the Ministry of External Affairs announced today.
The high-level entourage of President Sang will include the Deputy Prime Minister, Finance Minister, several deputy ministers and a 60 - member business delegation.
This is the first state visit by a Vietnamese President to Sri Lanka since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1970.
President Rajapaksa is expected to receive his visiting counterpart at the Bandaranaike International Airport in Katunayake. The visiting President will be accorded a guard of honour by the Sri Lanka Navy, followed by a 21 gun salute.
During his visit, President Sang is expected to hold talks with President Rajapaksa and several ministers on enhancing bilateral relations between the two nations.
At the conclusion of discussions, several agreements and MoUs are expected to be signed in a range of sectors such as political, defence, investment, finance, education & training, machinery manufacturing etc., the Ministry said in a statement.
On the last day of his tour, October 15, President Sang is expected to open a Vietnam Embassy in Colombo with the participation of Sri Lankan Prime Minister, D.M. Jayaratne as the chief guest.
"This visit will mark an important milestone in Sri Lanka - Viet Nam relations and would pave the way for greater economic cooperation between the two countries," the Ministry said.
If the GOSL can prove this transfer of funds from the LTTE to JVP's rebel wing led by Premkumar Gunaratnam, that should be sufficient to arrest and prosecute these people under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA).
Advocating violent insurrections, undermining and destabilizing the nation, in collusion with declared enemies of the Tamil Eelamist Diaspora using funds provided by the enemies ... is HIGH TREASON!
Arrest them!
Prosecute them!
Convict them!
HANG them!
................
JVP rebels’ bank accounts under prob Alleged LTTE funds:
by Saman Indrajith
Island.lk
October 12, 2011
State intelligence services are investigating allegations that the JVP dissidents led by Premkumar Gunaratnam are receiving funds from the LTTE activists overseas, according to sources.
The LTTE had channeled funds to the JVP rebel group from Canada and Scandinavia, an intelligence operative told The Island yesterday. "We have so far traced a bank account operated by two JVP dissidents, Dimuthu Attygalle and Waruna Rajapaksa at the Homagama branch of a State bank," he said. Refusing to mention the exact amount, he said it had over two million rupees.
Since the dissidents challenged the JVP leadership openly at a party Central Committee meeting on Sept. 19, they have spent over Rs. 6 mn on their propaganda and other activities, according to sources. Besides Rs. 3 mn spent on the launch of its propaganda organ, the recent Che Guevara commemoration the dissidents held at the Janakala Centre in Battaramulla and the country wide poster campaign to announce the event had cost at least Rs. 1 mn, according to intelligence sources.
Some of the dissidents had the JVP accounts operated under their names and after they broke ranks, the part was left with only Rs. 637,000 lying in its official account at the Bank of Ceylon’s Nugegoda Branch. The amount of funds the JVP trade union wing has in its bank accounts is not known.
A spokesman of the dissident group admitted they spent around six million rupees out of party funds. He said the dissidents needed at least Rs. 1.5 mn a month. He said the key JVP fund raisers had sided with the dissident group and people regardless of their ethnic and religious backgrounds were contributing funds to the JVP.
The ‘We are Sri Lankans’ movement launched by the JVP sometimes back to fight for the rights of LTTE suspects in custody and the missing northern youth received a great deal of funds from LTTE sympathisers living overseas. The movement led by former IUSF convener Udul Premaratne had directed funds to some bank accounts without the JVP’s concurrence, a Somawansa loyalist said adding that the matter had been raised at the Central Committee level sometimes ago but in vain.
“Lies Agreed Upon” screened at the British Parliament
News.lk
October 13, 2011
The Sri Lanka High Commission in London screened the Sri Lanka’s documentary titled “Lies Agreed Upon”, which directly challenges the assertions contained in the Channel 4 video, at the Attlee Suite, Portcullis House, at the British Parliament, yesterday.
The screening of the documentary, proved extremely popular and was followed by a dialogue with Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha, and Sir Peter Heap, KCMG, Chairman, Friends of Sri Lanka. Dr. Chris Nonis, High Commissioner for Sri Lanka chaired the panel discussion which followed the screening.
This was the first time the government’s response to Channel 4 film “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields” was screened in the UK to an audience consisting of British Parliamentarians, representatives from Academia, some media representatives including from Channel 4, and a cross-section of the Sri Lankan Diaspora.
Welcoming the participants, High Commissioner Dr. Nonis said it was particularly important to have this screening at a time when Sri Lanka is firmly embarked on the process of reconciliation and reintegration following a 28 year conflict as it is essential to have objective, fair and impartial reporting that will create unity and not divisions among all our communities.
In indicating how a concerted effort was necessary to put forward the facts clearly, Prof Rajiva Wijesinha, Adviser on Reconciliation to the President, said moderate British and Sri Lankan friends needed to realise the nature of the current threat to peace. He pointed out that, in the absence of any major publicity tool for Sri Lanka to present the true story, as against the LTTE rump which enjoys such privilege in the UK, only frequent interactions with attention to documented evidence will help lawmakers separate facts from fiction.
Further, the High Commissioner noted that what was needed amongst us all to rebuild the nation was an attitude of mind and an aptitude of heart.
Copies of the report of “Humanitarian Operation Factual Analysis July 2006 – May 2009” and the CD containing the documentary “Lies Agreed Upon” published by the Ministry of Defence were distributed among all participants.
Defence Secretary at book launch: ‘Defeat forces opposing War Heroes’
*Baseless allegations levelled against Forces
*Attempts to blot out victory against terrorism
By Sandasen MARASINGHE
DailyNews.lk
October 13,2011
Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said it was the responsibility of the public and government to confront the forces and groups operating with various agendas that make the public forget War Heroes and their victory against terrorism.
Defence Secretary
Gotabhaya Rajapaksa
He made this observation yesterday at the launching ceremony at Waters Edge of the book Kisi Vitekath Sathurata Yatath Novana Ma (I who never surrender to the enemy) written by the Sri Lanka Special Force Regiment.
The Defence Secretary further said certain groups and persons in the country, forgetting this responsibility, attempt to betray the people, country, War Heroes and their victories, the government and President. He added that they level baseless allegations against the forces, adding that they do so to gain short term benefits.
With reference to one such baseless allegation that Forces killed civilians, the Defence Secretary said the government had proved with evidence and statistics that those allegations were baseless.
He added that those inimical forces yet continue to talk about the same thing over and over again. Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa also said that the officers in the Sri Lankan Army are far more knowledgeable than their overseas counterparts.
He also said an officer promoted to the rank of Major General would have gained at least 10 overseas training stints.
He added that our forces are so professional that we were able to end the humanitarian operation in a professional way.
He said that others in the international sphere who condemn our forces should stop doing so and study our operations which benefits finding own solutions to issues.
He also said there are countries that have acknowledged the professional features of our Forces.
The Defence Secretary also stated that the people of this country never forget the victory gained for the nation by the War Heroes making the supreme sacrifice.
He added that it was only certain elements that attempt to make the public forget them.
He said the government would never forget the service rendered by the Forces for the unity of this nation. He added the practice of most was to appreciate others when they are no more.
He requested the public not to do so and never to forget the War Heroes.
Chief of Defence Staff Air Chief Marshal Roshan Goonetilake, Army Commander Lieutenant General Jagath Jayasuriya, Navy Commander Vice Admiral Somathilake Dissanayake, Air Force Commander Air Marshal Harsha Abeywickrama, Media Centre for National Security Director General Lakshman Hulugalla, retired Major General Gamini Hettiarachchi, Special Force Brigade Commander Harendra Ranasinghe were also present.
While Western Nations LANGUISH in Economic Doldrums, Sri Lanka FORGES AHEAD!
Yet, Western reception of Sri Lanka's ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE after REUNIFYING its TERRITORY beset by TERRORISM is LUKEWARM ... perhaps in their chagrin ... that they could not bring Sri Lanka to heel!
Let us DAMN the Naysayers, and GIRD OUR LIONS to ACHIEVE OUR GOAL of transforming Sri Lanka into the New Wonder of Asia!
Ratna Deepa, Janma Bhumi
Lanka Deepa, Vijaya Bhumi
Mey Apey Udara Wu
Mathru Bhumi-yayi!
Mathru Bhumi-yayi!
...............
FACTBOX-Key political risks to watch in Sri Lanka
By Shihar Aneez
(Adds growth forecast revision, natural gas find)
COLOMBO, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka successfully managed to negate attempts for a Western-led push for a war crimes investigation at recently concluded U.N. Human Rights Council sessions, but the island nation has said it is getting ready to face new attempts with the support of friendly nations. [ID: nL3E7KU1Y1]
RATINGS (Unchanged since September unless stated):
S&P: B+ with positive outlook
MOODY'S: B1 with positive outlook
FITCH: BB- with stable outlook
Following are the key political risks to watch:
WAR CRIME ALLEGATIONS
Western nations are still pushing the island nation for an independent probe for killing thousands of civilians in May 2009, the final stages of the Sri Lanka's 25-year war against separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.
Amnesty International last month said between 10,000 and 20,000 civilians were killed in the war's last months, but a national inquiry has failed so far to investigate war crimes by both the army and Tamil rebels. [ID: nL5E7K70W3].
Canada, for the first time, has publicly criticized Sri Lanka over its human rights record, setting the scene for a confrontation at a Commonwealth summit later this month.
At the UNHRC meeting, Canada brought a resolution to suggest that the next session in March should discuss a war crimes report by Sri Lanka's Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), due to be presented to President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Nov. 15.
A United Nations advisory panel's report says there is "credible evidence" both sides committed war crimes, which the government hotly contests. Many of the allegations originated with pro-Tiger sources or propaganda outlets.
Since the Tigers have been wiped out, that leaves only the government to possibly face justice over what the report says could be thousands of deaths.
Rajapaksa's government argues its attempts to reintegrate rebels must be given time, and says it is on guard to block Western moves to push forward a war crimes probe.
What to watch:
-- Report by LLRC, whose credibility has been questioned by local and international rights groups.
-- How Sri Lanka responds to fresh war crime allegations at Commonwealth summit in Perth, Oct. 28-30.
-- Any credible steps Sri Lanka will take to probe war crime evidence, at least to defuse mounting international pressure.
-- Further down the line, will there be an independent investigation and sanctions?
FACTBOX-Key political risks to watch in Sri Lanka
.......continued....
NEW ANTI-TERRORISM RULES
Despite ending tough wartime emergency rules, the government introduced a new anti-terrorism law early last month, seen by many as a move to suppress Rajapaksa's political opponents.
Rajapaksa enjoys a two-thirds parliament majority, and opposition parties -- facing intra-party conflicts after successive election defeats -- are unable to stop the government implementing new laws.
The new anti-terrorism rules, in addition to the pre-existing Prevention of Terrorism Act, would maintain high security zones that were established during the war.
What to watch:
-- Whether the government continues to use wide powers under anti-terrorism laws to suppress its opponents.
-- Whether the laws are used to control minority Tamils in former war zones, moves which have led Tamils to press Western nations against Rajapaksa's government.
TUSSLE WITH IMF
The central bank has been intervening in the foreign exchange market in order to prop up the rupee despite the International Monetary Fund asking it to limit its intervention due to the decline in Sri Lanka's foreign exchange reserves.
In response, the IMF has said there has been no timetable set for a review of Sri Lanka's progress under a $2.6 billion loan, the precursor to disbursement of the programme's eighth tranche.
Though that delay will not be an immediate problem for Sri Lanka, which had around $8.1 billion in reserves by the end of July, the possibility of ratings reviews may be a concern if sustained interventions deplete reserves.
The central bank has already said the country will see a balance of payment surplus by the end of 2011, which will help to ease pressure on the currency .
What to watch:
-- The central bank's response to the IMF's request that it limit intervention and selling dollars in foreign exchange market.
-- Whether the IMF releases the loan tranche, which could boost investor sentiment.
INVESTMENT CLIMATE
Sri Lanka's $50 billion economy expanded 8.2 percent in the second quarter, but the central bank in early October lowered its full-year growth target to 8.3 percent from its previous goal of 8.5 percent.
Annual inflation eased to 6.4 percent in September year-on-year and the central bank puts the end-December target at between 5 and 6 percent, while private sector credit growth has started to slow down.
Natural gas has been found off the coast of Sri Lanka in the Mannar Basin, the government said at the start of October, but driller Cairn India Ltd said further exploration was needed to see if it was commercially viable.
In general, post-war investments have picked up, with 2011 first half foreign direct investment reaching $413 million, almost double the same period in 2010. .
Large investments in ports have come primarily from China, the main actor in Sri Lanka's post-war redevelopment.
Those deals tend to be shrouded in mystery, so rumours of corruption abound. Many multinational companies have shied away, while Indian companies have also been aggressively moving in.
Since the end of the war, Sri Lanka has been increasingly reliant on China, India, and Russia for infrastructure loans and investments.
What to watch:
-- Commercial viability of the natural gas find.
-- Economic effects of big investments, and whether they trickle down to boost per-capita income.
-- Whether the ease and transparency of doing business in Sri Lanka improves.
-- Macroeconomic stability, and whether inflation stays under control.
(Editing by Daniel Magnowski)
Tiger, Tiger ... BURNT OUT!
Little by Little, Every Day in Every Way, Western Nations are moving to ensure their own security by SQUEEZING and PROSECUTING LTTE terrorists in the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora ... even as these nations ply their own global political agenda against Sri Lanka.
IT IS ONLY A CASE OF WHOSE OX IS BEING GORED ... AT ANY GIVEN TIME!
There are NO ENDURING ETHICAL PRINCIPLES except the PERMANENT PROTECTION OF SELF-INTEREST!
...............
Ex-Tiger tax collector called war criminal
By Adrian Humphreys
NationalPost.com'
September 29, 2011
A man who worked as a tax collector in the Tamil Tigers’ finance department while the terrorist group engaged in crimes against humanity has been branded a war criminal and ordered out of Canada in a court ruling that holds office clerks just as culpable as the armed insurgents they enable.
Puvanesan Thurairajah, 36, is a citizen of Sri Lanka and of Tamil ethnicity who, before coming to Canada, worked for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a group on Canada’s official list of designated terrorist organizations, the Federal Court of Canada heard.
After finishing school, he worked for his brother in a factory in Jaffna. The factory was charged a tax by the LTTE and when Tigers came to collect they tried to recruit him but he refused, Mr. Thurairajah told Canadian officials.
In late 1992, the LTTE took him to a camp by force, beat him and threatened to kill him, he said. After being held for three weeks, he agreed to work for them. He worked in the records office at an LTTE camp in Tinnevelly for a year and was paid a salary. He was then promoted to the finance department at the camp in Chankanai for two years, where he was responsible for collecting taxes for the Tigers, which funded the civil war.
While working in these camps he was always allowed to go home in the evenings, court heard. He stopped working for the LTTE when the Sri Lankan army won control of the Jaffna peninsula. In 2000, on a trip to the capital Colombo, he was arrested and accused of supporting the Tigers. He was released after six days after paying a bribe, he said.
He fled to Britain where his claim for asylum was rejected. In 2007, he arrived in Canada using a fake Canadian passport, settled in Montreal and claimed refugee protection.
That claim was rejected by the Immigration & Refugee Board (IRB) after an adjudicator found reasonable grounds to believe he committed a war crime or crime against humanity under Article 1F of the United Nations’ convention on refugees.
Mr. Thurairajah appealed that decision in court, arguing it was unreasonable to hold him to account for the actions of a group he was forced to join.
“The position he held within the Finance Department for the Tigers was by and large negligible. He never carried a weapon or participated in the commission of crimes against humanity,” say court documents summarizing his position.
His plea drew little judicial support. “An exclusion based on Article 1F of the Convention is a serious matter which could affect the refugee claimant for the rest of his life,” Justice Luc Martineau acknowledged before doing just that.
“The applicant admitted that the Tigers participated in many crimes against humanity and that they are an organization directed to a limited, brutal purpose,” the judge wrote in his decision.
“The [IRB] panel found the Tigers committed crimes against humanity at the time when the applicant belonged to it; that is, between 1992 and 1995…. The panel also found the applicant was complicit in crimes committed by the Tigers.”
Ex-Tiger tax collector called war criminal
.....continued.....
Justice Martineau found the IRB’s decision to be reasonable.
“The collection of taxes financing the Tigers cannot be qualified as a negligible or passive participation in the organization,” he wrote.
Myriam Harbec, Mr. Thurairajah’s lawyer, said she was disappointed with the decision but not entirely surprised.
“No matter what involvement they had with the LTTE, that’s the way the Federal Court is thinking right now,” Ms. Harbec said in an interview.
“But in Sri Lanka and in some African countries, people were forced to cooperate with these groups.”
Luc Labelle, spokesman for Canada Border Services Agency, declined to discuss the case, but said crimes against humanity cases are among the agency’s top priorities.
National Post
ahumphreys@nationalpost.com
11 Years Imprisonment is NOT ENOUGH!
Mark my words, he will be out in less than 5 Years .. because MONEY TALKS ... and ambitious politicians are EASILY BRIBED!
25 Years, without the option of an early release, would have been PERFECT!
.............
Sri Lankan-born hedge fund manager sentenced to 11 years in prison
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 13, New York: A New York federal court today sentenced the Sri Lankan-born Galleon hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam, who was found guilty on all counts in the high-profile insider trading trial, to 11 years in prison, according to the United States Attorney, Southern District of New York in Manhattan.
The sentence is one of the longest sentences handed over at an insider trading trial although the government sought a longer prison sentences as long as 25 years for Rajaratnam.
Rajaratnam, 54, who managed the $7 billion Galleon Group hedge fund, was found guilty of 14 counts of security fraud and conspiracy in May 2011.
In addition to the jail term, he was fined $10 million and ordered him to forfeit $53.8 million.
U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell, in his decision, has taken into account the health of the 54-year-old Rajaratnam who reportedly suffers from "advanced diabetes," which the judge has said may lead to kidney failure and a possible kidney transplant, Reuters reported.
The judge has granted a request made by the accused to serve his sentence at the Butner, North Carolina prison that has a hospital.
Rajaratnam was ordered to surrender to the authorities on November 28. The judge has denied a request by the Galleon founder to serve his time in house arrest while his appeal is being heard.
The verdict and the long prison term on the government case that was built on the wire-tap evidence could encourage the authorities to use such aggressive tactics to prosecute future errant investment figures.
Rajaratnam, a Sri Lankan Tamil immigrated to the US in 1981. He was an old boy of St. Thomas College in Mount Lavinia. He founded the Galleon hedge fund group in 1997.
His Galleon Fund was one of Sri Lanka's largest foreign investment funds and had large stakes in blue-chip companies. He was the single largest shareholder of conglomerate John Keells Holdings with 52.4 million shares.
A Vanity Fair article recently accused Rajaratnam of financing Sri Lanka's decades-long terrorist war against the Tamil Tiger terrorist organization Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
First meeting of the India-Sri Lanka Joint Committee on Science and Technology held
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 13, Colombo: The first meeting of the India-Sri Lanka Joint Committee on Science and Technology was held at New Delhi on 22 September 2011, a press release issued by India High Commission in Colombo said Thursday.
The Indian and Sri Lankan delegations were led respectively by Dr. Arabinda Mitra, Adviser and Head, Bilateral Cooperation Division, Department of Science & Technology, Government of India and Mrs. Dhara Wijayatilake, Secretary, Ministry of Technology Research, Government of Sri Lanka.
During the Joint Committee meeting, both sides discussed bilateral cooperation in the field of science & technology and identified common areas for future cooperation. They agreed that bilateral cooperation in science and technology needed to be stepped up. As an outcome of the meeting, the two sides signed a Programme of Cooperation in the Field Science & Technology for the period 2011-14.
The two sides identified several areas for cooperation, areas including food science & technology, nuclear technology applications, oceanography and earth sciences, bio-technology & pharmaceuticals, materials sciences, medical research including traditional medical systems and spatial data infrastructure and space sciences.
The two sides also agreed to take up joint science and technology projects, conduct joint scientific symposia and workshops and exchange of experts.
China assures Sri Lanka military assistance in training
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 13, Colombo: The Chinese Army has assured Sri Lanka military assistance, on request, in several areas of professional training including military exercises.
A visiting high-level delegation of China's People's Liberation Army has called on Sri Lanka Army Commander Lieutenant General Jagath Jayasuriya on Thursday at the Army Headquarters in Colombo.
The six-member Chinese delegation headed by Major General Qian Lihua, Chief of Foreign Affairs Office, Ministry of National Defence has assured the Army Commander of his Army's fullest cooperation to the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in several areas of its professional training, exercises and further promotion of military assistance to Sri Lanka on request, a statement issued by SLA said.
The Chinese military delegation was accompanied by China's Ambassador in Colombo Ms. Yang Xiuping.
The Chinese Commander has promised to offer more training opportunities for Sri Lankan trainee officers in military academies in China in the future when officially requested through the Defence Ministry.
The visiting Army official has also offered further assistance using advanced technology in China to improve the infrastructure facilities at the Sri Lanka Military Academy (SLMA) at Diyatalawa.
The visiting Chinese Chief of Foreign Affairs Office during talks has offered to train 100 more Sri Lankan Army de-miners as a goodwill gesture. At present, Sri Lanka's army de-miners were the only foreign contingent trained in China.
http://www.divaina.com/2011/10/14/news06.html
http://www.divaina.com/2011/10/14/news15.html
Casper ... Thanks for the Link.
MORE Anti-National Activities by the Tiger Nominated Agents of the TNA. When will they be held accountable for their continuing HIGH TREASON of the last three decades?
Translation of this Divaina newspaper article in Sinhala reads:
Group of TNA MPs leave for Secret Discussions in the USA.
Four Tamil Arusu Katchi (Tamil National Alliance) Members of Parliament are scheduled to leave on the 25th for SECRET discussions with US Government officials.
The goal of the discussions is to get the US to pressure the GoSL on the loss of the court case against the Emergency Regulations, to get Army Camps in the North to be removed, and to obtain Police powers.
The statement by Batticaloa MP K.P. Arianendran regarding this trip to the US has been reported to the Sri Lanka Government.
Assistant Secretary Robert Blake is expected to participate in these secret discussions.
Here is the Translation of Casper's second Divaina Sinhala newspaper article, but we wonder why this information was published if the arrests of Tiger operatives are still pending!
Something STINKS!
Details of Agents of the Swiss Tamil Tiger Network in Colombo are Revealed!
By Kirthi Warnakulasuriya
The Swiss government has provided information on 235 agents of the Swiss Tamil Tiger network residing in Colombo, including their phone numbers and telephone center in Colombo.
This information, provided at the direction of the Swiss Attorney General Patrick Lamonde, has revealed secret operations of Tiger agents in Colombo. Swiss Tiger supporters are apparently agitated at this support provided for the first time by the Swiss government to Sri Lanka.
Tiger communications between the Swiss Tiger Network and their agents in Colombo have not been previously reported by the Swiss government to Sri Lanka security authorities.
High level sources say that Tiger operatives in Colombo will be taken into custody on the basis of this secret information.
OUTFOXED!
Fox Quits Henhouse!
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Defence Secretary Liam Fox quits
Defence Secretary Liam Fox has resigned after a week of pressure over his working relationship with friend and self-styled adviser Adam Werritty.
Mr Fox was being investigated amid claims he broke the ministerial code.
In a letter to David Cameron, Mr Fox said he had "mistakenly allowed" personal and professional responsibilities to be "blurred".
Mr Cameron said he was very sorry to see him go. Transport Secretary Philip Hammond will replace Mr Fox.
Labour said Mr Fox had not upheld the standards expected of ministers and his departure had been "inevitable".
Business cards
The defence secretary has been under pressure since it emerged that Mr Werritty, a lobbyist, had met him on 18 foreign trips despite having no official role.
Mr Werritty, a former flatmate of Mr Fox and the best man at his wedding, handed out business cards suggesting he was his adviser and was present at meetings Mr Fox had with military figures, diplomats and defence contractors.
Questions were also raised about who paid for Mr Werritty's business activities and whether he had personally benefited from his frequent access to the defence secretary.
....More
Did the Tigers SCUTTLE Liam Fox because of his Pro-Sri Lanka stance?
The BBC ... a tool of the Tamil Tigers ... helped to HOUND Liam Fox out of Office.
And WE KNOW that the BBC is completely infiltrated by Tamil Tiger agents.
Also, did the Tamil Tiger Network leak this information on Adam Werrity to the media and create this brou-ha-ha to eject Liam Fox out of office?
Their GOAL is to PREVENT the emergence of any balanced approach by the UK Govt towards Sri Lanka. They want to keep the "war crimes" allegations boiling!
Time will tell ... Liam Fox's conservative friends will not let the Tigers get away scot free with it.
..............
Liam Fox's Sri Lanka trip makes Foreign Office furious
BBC.co.uk
October 14, 2011
Liam Fox, the defence secretary, is planning to defy the Foreign Office by making a personal visit to Sri Lanka this weekend to deliver a speech in honour of a former foreign minister.
The Foreign Office is debating whether to appeal to Downing Street to prevent Fox from visiting Sri Lanka, whose government is facing allegations of war crimes during its final assault on the Tamil Tigers last year.
The row erupted after Fox, who has personal links to Sri Lanka from his time as a Foreign Office minister in the 1990s and who has visited the country twice in the last 13 months, accepted an invitation to deliver the Lakshman Kadirgamar memorial lecture. The invitation was issued by the widow of the late foreign minister, who was murdered by a Tamil Tiger sniper in 2005.
Whitehall sources said that William Hague, the foreign secretary, is annoyed by Fox's decision. One Whitehall source said: "It is dreadful. William is appalled. It will take No 10 to haul him in." Britain wants to maintain pressure on Colombo in light of questions about its assault on the Tamil Tigers.
A spokesman for Fox said last night that none of the cost of the trip to Colombo would be paid for by the Sri Lankan government. "He will be paying for the hotel himself and he will be paying for the flight. The speech is about international security. It's nothing to do with anything that's going on in Sri Lanka."
Fox is understood to have discussed the trip with the Foreign Office. Hague is aware of the visit.
Two weeks ago, Fox held a private meeting with the Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, during an abortive visit to Britain. Rajapaksa flew out promptly after the Oxford Union cancelled his speech because of a threat of mass protests while Tamil campaigners attempted to obtain a war crimes arrest warrant against members of his entourage.
Human rights groups claim that 40,000 civilians were killed in the final stage of the war that eradicated the forces of the separatist Tamil Tigers in 2009. The Sri Lankan government has refused to allow any independent, international investigation of the alleged massacres and has instead established its own "lessons learnt and reconciliation commission".
Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, and Amnesty International have all declined to testify before it because the commission cannot assign accountability for war crimes.
Liam Fox's Sri Lanka trip makes Foreign Office furious
.....continued....
On the day that Tamil campaigners applied for an arrest warrant, pro-government demonstrators besieged the UK embassy in Colombo in protest at the cancellation of Rajapaksa's speech.
According to Sri Lankan papers, Fox is scheduled to deliver the lecture on 18 December. The Ministry of Defence confirmed that he is due to fly out to Colombo.
The Labour MP Jim Murphy, who tabled five questions about Fox's trip in parliament last night, said: "Sri Lanka is a nation with a troubled recent history. Britain can have an important role there but Liam Fox has to be clear exactly what he is trying to achieve with this visit."
Pressure on Fox increased this week when the shadow foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, said in the Commons: "[Hague] will know [Fox] will be meeting the Sri Lankan government … next week. Will he then take the message as a member of the UK government … about the importance of a credible investigation into alleged war crimes, and will he also press for an international element to the investigation?"
According to the latest register of members' interests, Fox has declared that he has been paid for two recent flights and stays to Sri Lanka.
The first was for a trip between 14 and 19 November 2009, recorded to have been worth £3,000. The donor was recorded as the Sri Lanka Development Trust, with an address in Edinburgh.
The purpose of the visit was said to be "to attend the Sri Lanka Freedom Party national convention and for meetings with the president of Sri Lanka and the foreign minister".
Liam Fox faces fresh questions on Sri Lanka links
Polly Curtis, Jason Burke, and Rupert Neate
Guardian.co.uk
October 13, 2011
Defence secretary accused of running 'maverick foreign policy' in Sri Lankan Development Trust dealings involving Adam Werritty
Liam Fox faced fresh accusations of running a shadow foreign policy after it emerged he was involved in setting up a private investment firm to operate in Sri Lanka in apparent contravention of UK government policy, with his controversial friend Adam Werritty as its key contact.
The defence secretary was intimately involved in negotiations with the Sri Lankan regime as recently as last summer, according to Lord Bell, his friend of 30 years, agreeing a deal that allows the Sri Lankan Development Trust to operate in the country in the same period in which he now says he withdrew his involvement. The trust was a venture designed to rebuild the country's infrastructure using private finance with a sideline in charitable projects for Tamil communities.
Labour urged the government to come clean on Fox's work in Sri Lanka and whether it might have contravened the government's official policy, while a senior Whitehall source said the minister had been operating a "maverick foreign policy" and it is this that will ultimately decide his political fate.
The government has adopted an arm's-length policy on Sri Lanka, calling for an independent inquiry into alleged war crimes. Since 2006 it has also had a policy to limit development work to urgent humanitarian assistance and "de-mining" areas affected by the civil war.
Fox told the Commons on Monday he had worked with "a number" of business, banking and political contacts to establish the trust in Sri Lanka.
He named only Werritty, his close friend who is at the heart of the scandal over his unofficial role as Fox's adviser. "Neither myself, Mr Werritty nor others sought to receive any share of the profits for assisting the trust," he said.
In June 2010, he met the Sri Lankan foreign minister in Singapore, along with Werritty and MoD officials. "The purpose of the meeting was to make it clear that although I would no longer be able to participate in the project, the others involved would continue to do so," he said on Monday. But Bell told the Guardian on Thursday that discussions took place last summer in which Fox agreed with the governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka that the trust would invest in roadbuilding and other infrastructure projects using private investment.
Bell, whose PR firm Bell Pottinger was employed by the Sri Lankan government until last year to improve the country's reputation abroad, said the deal had been struck between Fox and the head of the Sri Lankan bank: "In order for these funds to operate they would need an agreement with the country. The financial interests of Sri Lanka come under the governor of the Central Bank. My understanding is that the infrastructure development fund would be set up and have an agreement with the Sri Lankan government to invest in Tamil communities in Sri Lanka. It's a fine idea with a good sense of purpose."
He added that "of course" part of the strategy was to improve the regime's reputation abroad.
Liam Fox faces fresh questions on Sri Lanka links
....continued 1...
Kevan Jones, shadow defence minister, said: "Liam Fox told the house about the trust on Monday. It's clearly not a full explanation. If he was still striking deals with the Sri Lankans last summer, how does that fit with official UK foreign policy? He has to explain these negotiations. You can't have a situation where a government minister is appearing to run a completely separate foreign policy from that of the government."
Fox's parliamentary and private offices both said last night that Fox ceased to have any involvement with the trust on entering government.
The only activity the Sri Lanka Development Trust appears to have engaged in has been the payment of up to £7,500 of Fox's travel expenses, incurred on three trips to the country in 2009 and 2010.
The trust was originally registered to an address close to the Houses of Parliament in London, 40 George Street, which is also the offices of 3G, the "Good Governance Group", which is chaired by Chester Crocker, a former US politician. He also sits on the board of Bell Pottinger LLC, the US wing of Bell's publicity firm. Bell denied that there was any connection between his firm or its US subsidiary and Fox's Sri Lankan operation.
The trust has since transferred to the Lothian Road in Edinburgh, giving its address as No 50, a substantial granite and glass-fronted office block where a number of firms including the HQ of the Scottish oil exploration firm Cairn Energy and corporate offices for Clydesdale Bank are based. When the Guardian visited the building there was no sign of any physical presence of the organisation.
Two legal firms also based in the building are not believed to be connected. As a legal trust, it does not have to register either with the Charities Commission or on the register of businesses at Companies House. It does not have to publish the names of its trustees, it purpose or its beneficiaries.
Bell said that the trust consisted of two bodies, the Sri Lanka Infrastructure Development Fund, which was intended to raise money abroad from investors who would then share in the profit of ventures on the country, and the Sri Lanka Charitable Fund which would undertake charitable projects in Tamil areas in the north and east.
Inquiries in Colombo could not establish any activity the trust or its subsidiaries have so far carried out. Aid experts, senior politicians and officials in Sri Lanka said they had no knowledge of the trust. Nether the trust nor its subsidiaries are registered by the National Secretariat for Non-Governmental Organisations, a prerequisite for any such project.
On a trip in March 2009, shortly before the end of the bloody but successful government offensive, Fox called for the creation of "a special fund with the help of international partners ... to help the Sri Lankan government in handling the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the war ravaged areas in the north and east [of the country]."
Fox told local journalists he was suggesting "a new, independent, Sri Lanka construction fund". One aim of the fund, he said, would be to divert cash that had been flowing from ethnic Tamils overseas to the LTTE into reconstruction.
Liam Fox faces fresh questions on Sri Lanka links
....continued 2....
No activity on the ground appears to have occurred. "I have my ear pretty close to the ground and I doubt a major new reconstruction project in the north [of Sri Lanka] could get going without my knowledge and I have never heard of this trust," said one senior aid official in Colombo, the commercial capital.
The source of the trust's money for the transport to Sri Lanka for Fox is unknown. Contributions to the cost of the trips were also received from the Sri Lankan government via its London embassy.
Human rights groups have been critical of Fox's outspoken support for the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is now in his second term of office and has been accused by campaigners of repressing the press and opposition.
WikiLeaks cables revealed American diplomats' concerns at alleged government complicity in human rights abuses committed by troops and paramilitaries during the latter stages of the civil war. The United Nations has repeatedly pressed Sri Lanka for greater accountability and transparency.
Additional reporting: Severin Carrell
Sri Lanka Defense Ministry changes name
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 15, Colombo: Secretary to Sri Lanka President Lalith Weeratunga under the directions of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has issued a special gazette notification changing the official name of the Defense Ministry.
Under the special notification, the name of the Ministry has been changed as Defense and Urban Development Ministry.
Urban Development Authority has already been taken over to the Ministry of Defense. The Ministry is engaged in urban development activities immensely and the name change is expected to streamline and specify the scope of the Ministry.
Rohan Gunaratna: Dutch investigation "demonstrates beyond doubt that the LTTE intention was, even after the defeat of the leadership, to revive the fight. Funds were still being raised in the heart of Europe to sustain their campaign of terror."
This is a WAKE UP CALL for those bleeding heart Western Critics of Sri Lanka ... the LTTE Mafia is destroying your countries NOW!
Well before the LTTE revives violence in Sri Lanka, they will exploit the economies, corrupt the leadership, and undermine law and order in Western societies which they cling to and BLEED like PARASITES!
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Tamil Tigers still active in Europe: AP
CTV.ca
October 14, 2011
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — When Tamil Tigers were routed on the battlefield two years ago, the Sri Lankan government believed it had crushed the 25-year rebellion for a separate Tamil homeland.
But evidence surfacing in a courthouse in the Netherlands shows that the cause of Tamil independence is still alive in Europe, and an assessment from counterterrorism authorities says supporters of the defeated rebels remain engaged in extortion, human trafficking and other crimes to raise money for their brethren in Sri Lanka.
With the entire Tamil military leadership dead and the Sri Lankan army in control of former rebel territory, independent experts doubt a revival of an armed uprising is possible soon.
But while the Tigers have been defeated in Sri Lanka, "here in Europe they are very much alive," Dutch prosecutor Ward Ferdinandusse told The Hague District Court during the trial of five Tamils accused of being members of the outlawed organization, running illegal lotteries and laundering money.
A USB stick found in a tea cup at the home of one of the defendants revealed him to be the international bookkeeper for the worldwide Tamil diaspora, prosecutors allege. The data disclosed a financial plan for 2010, and indicate that Tamil exiles remain faithful to the goal of independence in northern Sri Lanka for the country's Tamil minority, the prosecution claims.
That analysis is echoed by the latest assessments published by Europol, the EU's police coordination organization.
In its 2011 "Terrorism Situation and Trend Report," Europol says Tamil Tigers still extort money from Tamils and are "actively involved in drugs and human trafficking, the facilitation of illegal immigration, credit card skimming, money laundering, and fraud for the purpose of funding terrorist (support) operations."
The twin assessments by Dutch authorities and Europol raise worrying questions about the possible regrouping of the Tigers, formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE. The LTTE is still listed as a terror organization by the European Union, United States and other countries.
Terrorism expert Prof. Rohan Gunaratna of Singapore's Nanyang Technological University said the Dutch investigation "demonstrates beyond doubt that the LTTE intention was, even after the defeat of the leadership, to revive the fight. Funds were still being raised in the heart of Europe to sustain their campaign of terror."
The International Crisis Group, a respected think tank, said in a report last year that even after the May 2009 defeat, "most Tamils abroad remain profoundly committed to Tamil Eelam, the existence of a separate state in Sri Lanka."
Tamil Tigers still active in Europe: AP
.......continued.....
It said Tamil expatriates are more radical than Tamils in Sri Lanka, who are exhausted by decades of war and the deaths of tens of thousands of their kin, and only want to start rebuilding their lives. Not a single attack has disrupted the two-year calm.
"At this point it would be extremely hard to generate any significant militancy in Sri Lanka," Alan Keenan, Crisis Group's expert on Sri Lanka, said in an interview. "I don't see Tamils within Sri Lanka being eager to start any kind of militancy right now. There is no evidence of there being any organized remnants of the LTTE in Sri Lanka."
The Tigers gained international notoriety through high-profile suicide bombings whose victims included one Sri Lankan president and India's former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
At the height of their powers, the LTTE ran a virtual country, with border controls, courts and an administrative bureaucracy supported by a rebel army of thousands of soldiers, heavy artillery, a navy and a nascent air force.
Contributions -- forced or voluntary -- from the 800,000-strong Tamil diaspora were critical to the Tigers' war effort. Money from abroad bought weapons, ammunition and explosives for regular forces and suicide bombers.
By the end of the war, an estimated 100,000 people were dead. Many of them were Tamils killed in the final no-holds-barred government offensive.
Now, overseas Tamils appear to be moving to fill a leadership void, with one senior Tamil confirming that several groups met late last month in Strasbourg, France, to discuss how to assist Tamils in Sri Lanka.
But Father S.J. Emmanuel, a Catholic priest who lives in Germany and heads the Global Tamil Forum, denied there is any question of a return to armed conflict. Talk of a Tamil Tiger revival is coming from the Sri Lankan government in an effort to demonize Tamils and deflect attention from allegations Sri Lankan forces committed crimes against humanity in the climax of the civil war, he said.
"There is an effort made by the Sri Lankan government to label all the diaspora communities outside Sri Lanka as LTTE supporters," Father Emmanuel told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "The LTTE is no more there. Why are you still saying we are sending money or something to LTTE?"
Dutch police and prosecutors, however, still believe there is Tamil Tiger activity in the Netherlands.
In a report sent confidentially to Dutch municipalities earlier this year, police warned that front organizations for the Tigers have close links to 21 schools where Tamil children study at weekends, in addition to their regular Dutch education. These groups aim at "passing on LTTE ideology to Tamil children living in the Netherlands," it said.
The report included drawings from Tamil schoolchildren that depicted the Tamil rebellion in stark terms: Tamil fighters holding hand grenades, Sri Lankan Air Force planes bombing thatched huts, a man loading the corpses of women onto an open wagon.
"The thoroughness with which Tamil children in the Netherlands ... are brainwashed with the extremely violent LTTE ideology is shocking," prosecutors told the Dutch judges.
Judges are expected to deliver their verdicts in the Tamil Tiger trial later this month.
Increasingly, killers can RUN, but they can't HIDE!
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Lanka prez aide’s murder accused deported
By Shishir Gupta
HindustanTimes.com
October 14, 2011
India and Sri Lanka took a step closer on the fight against criminals and terrorists after two alleged killers of Bharata Lakhsman Premachandra, advisor to President Mahinda Rajapaksa, were tracked down by Indian agencies and deported to Colombo from Mumbai early morning on Thursday.
Premachandra was gunned down by a mob led by MP Duminda Silva on October 8 at Angoda during an election to local bodies. Top government sources said after New Delhi’s help was sought by Colombo through diplomatic channels, the agencies acted swiftly and apprehended the alleged killers in Mumbai. They killers arrived in the city on October 9.
The security agencies closed in on the culprits on October 11 and kept them under watch. Later, their Indian visas were cancelled, which paved the way for their arrests on grounds of travelling without valid visas. Srinayaki Chaminda Ravi (32) Jaynath and Mohammed Sarfarar Sibly (28) were handed over to police. They were sent to Colombo on a Jet Airways flight at 2.10 am on Thursday. Police found two Sri Lankan passports in Jaynath’s possession.
ARREST them for TREASON, PROSECUTE them, CONVICT if Guilty, and HANG them HIGH!
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Sri Lanka Marxists struggle for funding sources, dissidents accused of receiving funds from LTTE
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 14, Colombo: Sri Lanka Marxist party Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) leader Somawansa Amarasinghe is scheduled to travel to several foreign countries next week to meet the party branches in those countries while the dissident group of the party is accused of receiving funds from the overseas LTTE sympathizers.
Amarasinghe is expected to apprise the party cadres in these countries over the present crisis in the party.
Sources close to the JVP say that the party split has affected the financial sources of the JVP Somawansa Amarasinghe faction since a number of foreign branches have pledged support to the dissidents.
Meanwhile, a spokesman of the JVP Premakumar Gunarathnam faction said that the allegation published in Sinhala daily The Divaina today that said the group gets funds from the LTTE was baseless and malicious.
The newspaper reported that state intelligence was probing the funding sources of the JVP dissidents' faction to ascertain if Tamil diaspora was pumping funds to it.
The LTTE had channeled funds to the JVP rebel group from Canada and Scandinavia, The Island reported on Wednesday quoting an intelligence operative.
The 'We are Sri Lankans' movement launched by the JVP to fight for the rights of LTTE suspects in custody and the missing northern youth has received a great deal of funds from overseas LTTE sympathizers, the newspaper reported.
Bravo, Long Live Vietnam!
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Vietnam expresses solidarity with Sri Lanka at all international assemblies
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 14, Colombo: Vietnam assured today that it will always stand by Sri Lanka at the international level and extend assistance at all international fora including the United Nations, South South Solidarity Movement and other assemblies.
The visiting Vietnam President Truong Tan Sang pledged to enhance bilateral cooperation between the two countries when he met his Sri Lankan counterpart President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Friday at the Presidential Secretariat.
Sang also promised to enhance relations in defence, training and equipment procurement, fisheries, agriculture, and petroleum sectors.
The two states inked several bilateral agreements during today's discussions. Among the eight agreements signed were a deal for the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation to buy oil from Vietnam's state oil firm and a Memorandum of Understanding on defence cooperation between the Ministry of Defence of Sri Lanka and the Ministry of National Defense of Vietnam.
Sri Lankan President extended his greetings on the successful completion of the 11th conference and the 13th national session of the Vietnamese Communist Party. The President also invited communist party cadres of Vietnam to build interrelations with the members of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party main constituent of the ruling alliance.
Sri Lanka inks deal to buy Vietnamese oil
By Ranga Sri lal
COLOMBO Oct 14 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka on Friday signed agreements with Vietnam to buy oil and share oil and gas expertise, just after it announced the discovery of natural gas offshore in the Mannar Basin.
Those two agreements were among eight signed after a two-day visit by Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang, along with a business delegation, to explore the expansion of commercial and diplomatic ties.
"We have signed two agreements, and one is to purchase oil from Vietnam's state oil firm by the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation," External Affairs Secretary Karunatilaka Amunugama told Reuters.
The other related to technical cooperation on oil and gas exploration, he said. He gave no details on the terms.
Six other memorandums of agreement, including one relating to defence cooperation, were also signed, he said.
Sri Lanka produces no oil and is dependent on imports, which cost it $3 billion in 2010, but this month had a promising natural gas find that may reinvigorate exploration interest in the country.
On Oct. 2, driller Cairn India Ltd. said it had found a natural gas deposit in the offshore Mannar Basin, but said more drilling was needed to see if it was commercially recoverable.
Sri Lanka also wants Vietnam's expertise to boost foreign direct investment, after the end of a quarter-century war that had long hampered the growth of the Indian Ocean island nation's $50 billion economy.
"We are ready to share any experience in the national development of Sri Lanka," Sang told an audience of Sri Lankan business owners in the capital, Colombo.
Sang said there was potential for increased cooperation in the textile, oil and gas, telecommunications, banking, infrastructure, security and education.
(Reporting by Ranga Sirilal; Editing by Bryson Hull)
UNESCO welcomes progress in Sri Lanka
DailyNews.lk
October 15, 2011
Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova welcomed the rapid and constructive progress made by Sri Lanka in the field of education and economic development.
Meeting the Minister of External Affairs, Prof. G. L. Peiris at the headquarters of UNESCO in Paris, the Director General noted the progressive changes being incorporated into the education sector and highlighted the significant strides made in the sphere of economic development and sustenance in a post conflict scenario, stated the Permanent Delegation of Sri Lanka to UNESCO in Paris.
The External Affairs Minister briefed the Director General on the development activities taking place across the country and the special emphasis placed at a policy level on ensuring that all forms of development were felt by every citizen and stressed the premium placed on education, which is a much regarded and sustained investment across communities.
He articulated the position of the government in encouraging people-to-people contact as one of the best modes of reconciliation geared towards building and strengthening bonds of friendship.
Minister Peiris added that emphasis was being placed on social mobility in terms of access to education and the provision thereby of a market driven social system in which the existing demands were met and necessary innovative transformations integrated into the societal spectrum.
Noting that the only renewable energy in the world was human capital, the Director General commended the efforts undertaken by Sri Lanka in investing in this sphere of activity, especially given the very high rate of literacy in the country.
Minister Peiris, reiterating the invitation to the Director General to visit Sri Lanka and witness the efforts being made to engage, dialogue and build a society, in which the hopes and aspirations of the youth are realized in a globalized world in which a multiplicity of cultures exists, the Minister pointed out that the United Nations itself needed to recognize this pluralism and diversity of approach by different civilizations embodying distinct value systems.
Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of Sri Lanka, Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka and Assistant Director General of External Relations of UNESCO, Mr. Eric Falt were also present at the discussions.
Excellent!
Expansion of Sri Lankan airlines, in step with expansion of Sri Lanka's international airports, will allow Sri Lanka to CAPTURE THE INCOME from transporting foreign tourists to Sri Lanka for the benefit of Sri Lankans.
Jayawewa!
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Sri Lanka to purchase more aircraft, expand the international airport
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 14, Colombo: Sri Lanka plans to add five more aircraft to its national aviation service within next five months, Minister of Civil and Aviation Priyankara Jayaratne has said.
Participating in a programme at the state-run radio Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation, the Minister has revealed plans to purchase Three Airbus A320 aircraft and two more for long distance flights.
Two of the planes will be added to the service at the end of this year and other three will be obtained by March 2012.
The government plans to expand the fleet of 19 aircraft currently in service up to 30 in the next four years.
The Minister has indicated that the government has given priority to civil aviation under the Mahinda Chinthana vision and taken several measures to develop the aviation service.
He noted that 60 percent of the construction work of Sri Lankan's second international airport at Mattala in Hambanthota district has already been completed and the airport will be opened for international flights at the end of 2012.
Meanwhile, Katunayake international airport will be expanded to facilitate the handling of modern Airbus A 380 aircraft.
The government is expanding air services to accommodate the increased influx of tourists to the country following the end of the war in May 2009.
Czech assistance to recommence construction of hydropower plant in Sri Lanka
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 15, Colombo: The Czech government has agreed to provide financial assistance to recommence the construction work of proposed Inginiyagala hydropower plant in Ampara.
The agreement had been reached during the discussions between Sri Lankan Premier D.M. Jayaratne and Czech Republic Minister of Trade and Industry Martin Kocourek.
The cost of the first phase of the Inginiyagala hydropower plant is estimated at US$ 35 million.
The proposed hydropower plant is expected to ease the burden of meeting growing demand for power consumption in the country.
The Czech government has also expressed willingness to assist Sri Lanka in combating environment pollution in Colombo and Kandy.
Borrowing for Long-Term Infrastructure DEVELOPMENT is VERY GOOD, but borrowing for CONSUMPTIVE spending is VERY BAD.
If 1,100 billion rupees is recurrent spending, presumably on consumption, and capital investments is 540 billion rupees, presumably on infrastructure development, where does the balance of spending of (2,220 - 1,100 - 540 )= 580 billion rupees in the 2012 budget go?
Let me EMPHASIZE, investment in National Development on Long-Term Infrastructure that will increase future economic activity on a SUSTAINABLE BASIS is VERY GOOD, but borrowing for current consumption is VERY BAD for Sri Lanka's future.
We MUST LEARN from the current financial problems of Western Economies ... and avoid spending on CONSUMPTION beyond our MEANS.
................
Sri Lanka Estimates 2012 Budget Deficit of 1.105 Trillion Rupees
By Anusha Ondaatjie
Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Sri Lanka’s government expenditure in 2012 is estimated at 2.22 trillion rupees ($20.1 billion) and revenue at 1.115 trillion rupees, resulting in a budget deficit of 1.105 trillion rupees, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement on its website.
Capital investment for 2012 will be about 540 billion rupees and recurrent expenditure is estimated at 1.1 trillion rupees, it said. Sri Lanka on Oct. 18 will table in parliament the Appropriation Bill, which outlines spending estimates ahead of the annual budget announcement on Nov. 21.
To contact the reporter on this story: Anusha Ondaatjie in Colombo at anushao@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Sunil Jagtiani at sjagtiani@bloomberg.net
AS USUAL, the Tiger Nominated Agents of the TNA (Tamil National Alliance} want to DISMANTLE ALL SECURITY MEASURES in the North and East ... under the PRETEXT of "human rights violations" ... so they can resume hidden from view clandestine separatist activities geared to achieving "EELAM".
They MOURN the COMPLETE FREEDOM they ENJOYED to cause MURDER & MAYHEM under the late unlamented Sun God ... Velupillai Prabhakaran.
This is like the Al Quaida demanding cessation of all security measures in Afghanistan so the fox can have the run of the henhouse!
The affrontery of the TNA arises from NOT BEING HELD ACCOUNTABLE for their TREASONOUS ACTIVITIES of the last 3 DECADES!
These guys should be PROSECUTED for TREASON & TERRORISM and given PERMANENT TENURE breaking ROCKS in PRISON!
Allowing them to get away SCOT FREE only ENCOURAGES further covert and overt anti-national activities.
GoSL ... are you listening?
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Sri Lanka's major Tamil party seeks ways to continue struggle against the PTA
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 16, Colombo: The major Tamil political party of Sri Lanka, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is looking at how best to proceed with their struggle against the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) after the Supreme Court had last week rejected a petition filed by a TNA parliamentarian.
TNA parliamentarian Mavai Senathirajah filed a fundamental rights petition at the Supreme Court against three regulations of the PTA.
Senathirajah has told the media the party was currently discussing with the lawyers on how to proceed with the matter.
Meanwhile, the TNA is also looking at the possibility of taking up the issue of the PTA with the UN Human Rights Council.
According to the TNA, the Defence Ministry had caused an infringement of the fundamental rights of the people guaranteed by the Constitution including the right to freedom from torture, right to equality and equal protection of the law, freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention, freedom of speech and expression including publication and the freedom to engage in any lawful occupation, business or enterprise.
The Sri Lankan government lifted the emergency regulations in August, but the PTA remains effective to handle matters related to the LTTE terrorist organization in the absence of the emergency law.
The PTA provides the police with broad powers to search, arrest, and detain suspects. It was first enacted as a temporary law in 1979 and made permanent in 1982.
Govt. adopts two-pronged strategy on international relations
Boosting relations with China, normalizing links with US military
by Shamindra Ferdinando
Island.lk
October 15, 2011
In the wake of ongoing international attempts to isolate Sri Lanka over accountability issues, President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government is boosting its relations with China, while normalizing relations with the US military.
US joined UK in declining an invitation for a Defence Ministry seminar in Colombo to share Sri Lanka’s experience in defeating LTTE terrorism in the wake of war crimes allegations targeting Sri Lanka.
During recent talks in Colombo between a visiting Chinese defence delegation and SLN Chief Vice Admiral Somathilake Dissanayake last Thursday (Oct. 13), the visitors offered to conduct joint naval exercises and surveillance operations.
USS Ford (FFG 54), a frigate of the Oliver Hazard Perry Class of the United States Navy, will conduct a port call in Galle, Sri Lanka October 11-14, 2011. The visit is a routine port visit and is intended to provide the sailors of the U.S.S. Ford an opportunity for engagement with their Sri Lanka Navy partners and for cultural exchange.
This U.S. Navy port visit promotes peace and stability in the Western Pacific region, and demonstrates the U.S. commitment to regional partners such as Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka has historically been a strong partner of the U.S. in addressing common security challenges in the region including humanitarian assistance and disaster relief preparedness. This strong relationship between the U.S. and Sri Lanka also helps advance many common interests including mutual security, prosperity and the promotion of freedom.
During the port call, the crew will spend time ashore learning about the people and culture of Sri Lanka. The crew will engage in a community service event, working to clean a local beach.
The last U.S. Navy ship to visit to Sri Lanka was the USS. Pearl Harbor (LSD 52), a Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ship, to Trincomalee in July 2010.
Navy headquarters spokesperson Commander Kosala Waenakulasuriya quoted Vice Admiral Dissanayake as having told the Chinese delegation that China provided significant support to achieve peace and economic stability. Advanced naval training provided by China had helped the SLN to improve its capabilities.
The SLN Chief was responding to the Chinese praising what the SLN spokesman called the SLN’s achievements in asymmetric warfare with the innovations made in the construction of small boats and operations.
The Chinese also had a meeting with Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa on Oct. 12 when Maj. Gen Qian Lihua signed a MOU to provide material assistance worth of Yuan 10 million to the Defence Services College in Colombo.
External Affairs Ministry sources told The Sunday Island that Sri Lanka and Vietnam finalized eight agreements, including one on defence relations during Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang recently concluded visit.
Vietnam supported Sri Lanka’s successful war against the LTTE in spite of the LTTE making an effort to utilize Vietnam as a front.
Sources said that with the development of the Hambantota port with Chinese support, Sri Lanka had attracted attention of regional as well as world naval powers. The whistle-blowing website Wikileaks had revealed that the Hambantota port had been discussed among US and Indian officials with the latter seeking US surveillance on the project.
35% of GDP ANNUAL INVESTMENT is HUGE for any country.
If the BULK of that ANNUAL investment goes into Infrastructure geared to Long-Term Development, Sri Lanka can expect rapid economic growth beyond imagination!
Jayawewa!
...........
Govt targets 35 percent GDP investment by 2016
by Uditha KUMARASINGHE
SundayObserver.lk
October 16, 2011
The Government is targeting an annual investment of 33-35 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2016.
Of this percentage 6-7 percent will be Government investment whereas the private sector, domestic and foreign is expected to invest 27-28 percent of the GDP, a Finance Ministry spokesman told the Sunday Observer.
He said the Government has already taken several initiatives such as lowering interest rates, strengthening banking and non-banking financial institutions, reforming the tax system and various other incentives to boost the investment. Top priority has also been given to identify and overcome barriers to investment.The private sector is expected to invest in tourism, IT/BPO, skills development, urban development, agriculture and manufacturing sectors, he said.
Sri Lanka which is in a strategically advantageous position, has huge potential to be a regional economic hub. The Mahinda Chintana Economic Policy is based on the development of five economic hubs which will integrate the domestic economy with international markets, capitalising on the human and natural resources in the country.
Rs 300 crore Navy deal with Sri Lanka firm
http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2011/10/17/rs-300-crore-navy-deal-sri-lanka-firm
Sri Lanka has world's highest tariffs for renewable energy: analysis
LankaBusinessOnline.lk
Oct 19, 2011 (LBO) - Average prices paid in Sri Lanka to renewable energy firms in wind, mini-hydro and biomass are among the highest in the world, an analysis by an industry expert has shown.
Wind power plants in Sri Lanka are paid an average of 19.97 rupees a kiloWatt hour compared to the equivalent of 7.11 rupees in South Korea, 9.84 rupees in Taiwan, 13.69 in Uganda and 18.34 in Thailand, an analysis by Tilak Siyambalapitiya, an industry consultant shows.
Sri Lanka offers a standard power purchase contract for small renewable plants of under 10 MegaWatts.
Siyambalapitiya said attempts were now being made to allow larger wind plants where capital costs would be lower.
Biomass firms are paid 20.70 rupees a unit in Sri Lanka compared to the equivalent of 4.74 rupees in Thailand, 6.50 in India's Andra Pradesh state, 9.85 in Malaysia, 10.46 in Madya Pradesh state, 11.37 in Uganda, 16.00 in USA's Minnesota state.
Among the tariffs for renewable mini-hydro firms were among the lowest paid in Sri Lanka at an average of 13.32 rupees compared to 5.11 rupees for Thailand, 8.39 for Malaysia, 11.04 for USA and 12.18 for Germany.
Tariffs for renewable are paid under complex formulas, with tired prices in some cases, which are difficult for laymen to understand.
Table: Feed-in Tariffs in Different Countries ... see original article
Siyambalapitiya told members of Sri Lanka Economics Association that the newly built coals plant now cost about 10.00 rupees a unit when capital costs were included.
He said the environmental costs of thermal plants were at the moment included in the thermal generation sector only as compliance cost for environmental standards, such as for air quality or warm water discharges.
Renewable industry has become one of the fastest growing businesses in the world, backed by heavy lobbying and subsidies.
External Affairs Minister counters biases:
World urged to focus on SL’s pluses
DailyNews.lk
October 19, 2011
* One of the govt’s main achievements is reconciliation
* Need to avoid preconceived judgements or partisan attitudes
The government recently underscored the importance of the international community rejoicing in the achievements of Sri Lanka in the field of rehabilitation of former LTTE combatants, reconciliation and the development of war battered areas.
External Affairs Minister Prof G.L. Peiris stressed that one of the present government’s main achievements is reconciliation. The minister explained the crucial role of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission as a sensitive mechanism which addresses, in a constructive spirit, the pain and anguish of the past and builds the foundation for a future filled with promise and expectation.
He said that any kind of presumption is a reflection of prejudice which will affect the delicate reconciliation process.
Minister Prof Peiris was addressing the members of the French political establishment, the media, diplomats, scholars and representatives of civil society at the prestigious Academic Diplomatique Internationale in Paris, recently.
Prof Peiris said reconciliation has a significant economic dimension which is amply demonstrated by the fact that the economy of the Northern province is growing by 22 per cent.
He said the government has launched a massive development drive in the Northern Province with particular emphasis on the development of highways and rail roads.
The minister gave an account of infrastructure development in the Northern region, the large volumes of capital made available by the banking system to entrepreneurs with resulting generation of employment and the revival of agricultural activity and fisheries.
Minister Peiris said that the government is in the process of integrating former LTTE combatants into society after exposure to vocational training which assured them of access to livelihoods and incomes.
Referring to the ceremony two weeks ago in Colombo where President Mahinda Rajapaksa presided over the reintegration into society of over 1,800 ex-combatants who returned to their villages, External Affairs Minister said he was proud of the success achieved in efforts to bring youth who had been misguided into espousing violence, back into the democratic mainstream. Some of them have secured admission to universities while others are gainfully employed in the public and private sectors or self employment projects.
He stressed the importance of international community rejoicing wholeheartedly in these salutary developments without any preconceived judgments or partisan attitudes.
When the presence of this rock was first pointed out at the time the Hambantota Port was declared open, the GOSL vehemently denied it.
Now, "the rock" is quietly being removed at considerable cost.
While we support the Herculean Efforts of this Patriotic Government, the GOSL will retain the confidence of citizens better by openly acknowledging problems that do arise, without offering barefaced denials.
We do not expect the GOSL to be OMNISCIENCT and ERROR-FREE, but we do expect it to tell the truth without fear of anti-national elements who try to politicize every error.
The TRUTH MUST REIGN.
The TRUTH will earn our confidence.
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Hambanthota port of Sri Lanka to be clear of rocks by next month
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 18, Colombo: Blasting off the remaining parts of the massive seabed rock obstructing the entrance of Sri Lanka's newly constructed inland harbor at Hambanthota will be completed by the first week of November, if all goes well as scheduled, the Chief Engineer of Hambanthota Port Agil Hewageegana has said.
The official has told News360 the blasting of the rock that was halted due to monsoon has been re-started since October 08.
The removal of the rock in Hambanthota harbor will fulfill international maritime requirement needed to operate a port.
The blasts are carried out by the Chinese contractor who built the port. An additional cost close to one fourth of the total expenditure for the harbor has been allocated to remove the rock.
Sri Lanka Port Authority had asked China for $40 million loan to demolish the seabed rock.
Sri Lanka's High Court to deliver verdict of White Flag case in a month
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 18, Colombo: The High Court Trial at Bar has said today the verdict in the controversial White Flag case against former Army Commander Sarath Fonseka would be delivered on November 18th.
A case was filed against Fonseka for making a statement to a weekly English newspaper during the last Presidential election campaign that the Defence Secretary had ordered the shooting of LTTE members who were trying to surrender to the government forces carrying white flags during the final stages of the war.
Fonseka was accused of making a false statement to the newspaper, inciting communal sentiments among people and for building an anti-government sentiment among the public.
Fonseka's counsel, Attorney Nalin Ladduwahetty ended his submissions today and the judges informed that the verdict would be delivered on November 18th.
The Trial-at-Bar consists of Judges Deepali Wijesundara (President), W.T. M. P.B. Warawewa and M.S. Razeen.
More Power to Sri Lankan American David Wijewickrama.
We need more advocates like him to help improve the Sri Lanka - US relationship!
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Where was Shuler during Obama's visit? Sri Lanka
For the second time in just more than two years, U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville, is spending a week in Sri Lanka.
“Congressman Shuler left for the bipartisan congressional fact-finding trip to Sri Lanka on Sunday, and he will be back this Friday,” Shuler spokeswoman Whitney Mitchell said. “He is joined by two other members of Congress, Congressman Jack Kingston, (R-Ga.) and Congressman Ben Chandler, (D-Ky). The trip is being paid for by the Sri Lankan government but has been coordinated through the U.S. State Department Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Program.”
It is an official government trip that the Sri Lankan government organized through the U.S. State Department.
Located in the Indian Ocean off the coast of India, Sri Lanka is home to 21.3 million people.
Shuler was notably absent Monday during President Obama’s visit to Asheville Regional Airport. Other Democratic heavyweights, including U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, and Asheville Mayor Terry Bellamy, were there.
“This trip was planned before we knew the president was coming,” Mitchell said.
Chris Cooper, director of the Public Policy Institute at Western Carolina University, said Shuler’s trip wouldn’t “be a big deal” had Obama not been in town.
“I don’t think it will play well or play poorly in the district,” Cooper said. “I think people probably have bigger fish to fry.”
The Sri Lankan government is trying to influence the U.S. government through such visits, Cooper said, and some may see that as influence peddling.
“If you think about influence, influence in politics is built on relationships — to whatever degree you build relationships, you’re trying to build influence,” Cooper said. “It probably is influence peddling, but that doesn’t mean it’s immoral, illegal or unusual.”
Shuler also went to Sri Lanka in 2009, shortly after the government announced its military had defeated the remnants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, often called the Tamil Tigers.
The Central Intelligence Agency notes that “since the end of the conflict, the government has resettled tens of thousands of internally displaced persons and has undertaken a number of massive infrastructure projects to reconstruct its economy.” In 2009, critics said Shuler was playing into the hands of the government.
David Wijewickrama, a Waynesville attorney of Sri Lankan descent, accompanied Shuler on both trips.
BREAKING NEWS Video:Muammar Gaddafi is Dead ... cornered by NATO, killed by "rebels"!
Western Neo-Colonialists & their Libyan Lackeys will REJOICE ... the POOR of Libya & Africa will MOURN!
Are these NATO orchestrated "war crimes" going to be prosecuted now?
More likely to be COVERED UP ... quite literally as bodies are buried post haste with bulldozers!
Mass shootings of captured Gaddafi troops, bombings of civilian areas of Gaddafi's poor supporters in Tripoli, and lynchings of black Africans on suspicion of being mercenaries ... all killed by the democracy loving "rebels" and their Western special forces allies, and NATO warplanes.
Such are the self serving activities of the Neo-Colonialists!
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Survivor mourns dead piled up on Gaddafi son’s doorstep
A wounded Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) fighter makes the victory sign as he sits in an ambulance before being taken to a hospital in Sirte. Photo: Aris Messinis
A wounded Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) fighter makes the victory sign as he sits in an ambulance before being taken to a hospital in Sirte. Photo: Aris Messinis
By Ruth Sherlock, in Sirte
Published on Saturday 15 October 2011 15:01
Libyan fighters have discovered a mass grave of men thought to have been captives of troops loyal to Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi in the former dictator’s crumbling stronghold of Sirte as fighting continued yesterday.
Bloated and disfigured, the corpses lay in the grounds of a farmhouse. Wearing civilian clothes, the men’s hands were tied behind their backs.
After weeks of fighting, which yesterday saw tanks push deep into the city to try and break the last pocket of resistance, three piles were found in the fields, just metres from the front line of the battle.
The spray of bullet holes in the walls, and spent anti-aircraft gun cartridges nearby, told of a grim and bloody summary execution.
Doctors who arrived on the scene two days before, as Libyan fighters first took control of the farmland, counted 42 dead.
“These men were killed five days ago,” said Dr Abdul Rauf Bin Yousef, before interim government forces were in control.
Some had been removed, doctors said, but yesterday 17 still remained. What exactly happened to these men in their last hours is not proven, but accounts from other prisoners paint a grim picture.
Anis Faraj, 22, who had been imprisoned by the regime the month before, identified some of the corpses as men with whom he had shared a cell.
“Sheikh Abdullah Farjan would lead our prayers in prison. He had been thrown in jail for speaking out against Gaddafi on a recorded tape” said Faraj, recognising a body on the site.
Mr Faraj had served in Misrata military airbase, but had escaped from his military service as the civil war intensified. He was thrown into a prison in the Sirte police station after loyalist volunteers found him hiding with family members in Abu Hadi district of Sirte, and recognised his accent as being from rebel-held territory.
Last week, after three weeks of imprisonment, Mr Faraj said guards came to the men and told them that Mo’tassim Gaddafi, who served as a security adviser to his now deposed father, “wanted the disloyal rats from the prison”.
“They lined us up, all 47 men outside with our back to four armed guards. They shot their weapons around our feet, and tied our hands with zip ties,” he added.
Mr Faraj was saved by a guard who recognised him as a colleague from Misrata military airbase. “He took me to his house, gave me a Kalashnikov and told me to continue the hunt for the ‘rats’ with them.”
Survivor mourns dead piled up on Gaddafi son’s doorstep
......continued....
As loyalists fight in an ever-shrinking pocket, they have become increasingly vengeful on opposition members.
“They are not bothering to put them in prison any more. If they think you are against Gaddafi, they kill you,” said Faraj.
“Soldiers I was with spoke of taking opposition members to the beach front to kill them.”
But a senior UN human rights official also says there is a risk of serious abuses occurring when the last strongholds of the ousted Libyan dictator fall to revolutionary forces.
The head of the UN human right’s office’s rule of law section, Mona Rishmawi, says perceived Gaddafi loyalists face persecution when fighting in the towns of Sirte and Bani Walid ends.
Keen to end the months long campaign for this, one of the last bastions of the regime, interim government fighters pounded the last district of the city that is yet to fall with tanks yesterday.
“This is about to be over. They have nothing left now,” said fighter Basset Bibas, 35.
What "rat"?
Gaddafi FOUGHT TO THE LAST, was captured wounded and shot dead afterwards!
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Libya's Gaddafi caught hiding like a "rat"
By Tim Gaynor and Taha Zargoun
October 20, 2011
SIRTE, Libya (Reuters) - Muammar Gaddafi called the rebels who rose up against his 42-years of one-man rule "rats," but in the end it was he who was captured cowering in a drainage pipe full of rubbish and filth.
"He called us rats, but look where we found him," said Ahmed Al Sahati, a 27-year-old government fighter, standing next to two stinking drainage pipes under a six-lane highway.
Government fighters, video evidence and the scenes of sheer carnage nearby told the story of the dictator's final hours.
Shortly before dawn prayers on Thursday, Gaddafi surrounded by a few dozen loyal bodyguards and accompanied by the head of his now non-existent army Abu Bakr Younis Jabr broke out of the two-month siege of Sirte and made a break for the west.
But they did not get far.
NATO said its aircraft struck military vehicles belonging to pro-Gaddafi forces near Sirte at about 8:30 a.m. (0630 GMT) on Thursday, but the alliance said it was unsure whether the strikes had killed Gaddafi.
Fifteen pick-up trucks mounted with heavy machine guns lay burned out, smashed and smoldering next to an electricity sub station some 20 meters from the main road, about two miles west of Sirte.
They had clearly been hit by a force far beyond anything the motley army the former rebels have assembled during eight months of revolt to overthrow the once feared leader.
But there was no bomb crater, indicating the strike may have been carried out by a helicopter gunship, or had been strafed by a fighter jet.
Inside the trucks still in their seats sat the charred skeletal remains of drivers and passengers killed instantly by the strike. Other bodies lay mutilated and contorted strewn in the grass. Some 50 bodies in all.
Gaddafi himself and a handful of his men escaped death and appeared to have ran through a stand of trees toward the main road and hid in the two drainage pipes.
But a group of government fighters were on their tail.
"At first we fired at them with anti-aircraft guns, but it was no use," said Salem Bakeer, while being feted by his comrades near the road. "Then we went in on foot.
"One of Gaddafi's men came out waving his rifle in the air and shouting surrender, but as soon as he saw my face he started shooting at me," he told Reuters.
"Then I think Gaddafi must have told them to stop. 'My master is here, my master is here', he said, 'Muammar Gaddafi is here and he is wounded'," said Bakeer.
"We went in and brought Gaddafi out. He was saying 'what's wrong? What's wrong? What's going on?'. Then we took him and put him in the car," Bakeer said.
At the time of capture, Gaddafi was already wounded with gunshots to his leg and to his back, Bakeer said.
Other government fighters who said they took part in Gaddafi's capture, separately confirmed Bakeer's version of events, though one said the man who ruled Libya for 42 years was shot and wounded at the last minute by one of his own men.
"One of Muammar Gaddafi's guards shot him in the chest," said Omran Jouma Shawan.
Army chief Jabr was also captured alive, Bakeer said. NTC officials later announced he was dead.
Libya's Gaddafi caught hiding like a "rat"
.....continued......
Fallen electricity cables partially covered the entrance to the pipes and the bodies of three men, apparently Gaddafi bodyguards lay at the entrance to one end, one in shorts probably due to a bandaged wound on his leg.
Four more bodies lay at the other end of the pipes. All black men, one had his brains blown out, another man had been decapitated, his dreadlocked head lying beside his torso.
Joyous government fighters fired their weapons in the air, shouted "Allahu Akbar" and posed for pictures. Others wrote graffiti on the concrete parapets of the highway.
"Gaddafi was captured here," said one simply.
From there Gaddafi was taken to the nearby city of Sirte where he and his dwindling band of die-hard supporters had made a last stand under a rain of missile and artillery fire in a desperate two-month siege.
Video footage showed Gaddafi, dazed and wounded, but still clearly alive and gesturing with his hands as he was dragged from a pick-up truck by a crowd of angry jostling group of government soldiers who hit him and pulled his hair.
He then appeared to fall to the ground and was enveloped by the crowd. NTC officials later announced Gaddafi had died of his wounds after capture.
(Writing by Jon Hemming Editing by Maria Golovnina)
Is Assasination of Foreign Leaders in Peacetime ... Previously BANNED by US Law ... official US Policy now?
Billary wanted Gaddafi killed ... an d he was!
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Hillary Clinton Wants Gaddafi Killed
By Shirin Sadeghi
HuffingtonPost.com
October 19, 2011
It was only last week that the US government tried to negatively portray Iran and Iranians by associating them with political assassinations.
It was just this week that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton openly called for the political assassination of Moammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader. "We hope he can be captured or killed soon," she said -- while in Libya, to Libyans.
It is actually against the law, what the US government is doing.
And not some kind of United Nations "law" or international legal standard (of the sort that sound fantastically humane but are actually just unenforced moral standards that most countries, especially superpowers, routinely ignore).
State-sponsored assassination is actually illegal according to the laws of the United States itself.
In the decades before and since President Gerald Ford signed United States Presidential Executive Order (EO) 11905 on February 18, 1976, the US government has directly and indirectly assassinated people -- many people. And EO 11905 is not exactly ambiguous legal speak -- it's one of the most straightforward pieces of legal documentation you will find. In Section 5, subsection G, it clearly states that "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination."
But not only does this law of the land continue to be violated, it is undertaken with boast and bluster -- as well as the requisite vocabulary of patriotism -- by high level figures in the US government. This week's announcement in Libya by Hillary Clinton that she would like Libyan President Moammar Gaddafi "captured or killed soon," though blunt, should not have come as a surprise. Under Obama, two high profile assassinations have already been paraded in the national and international media in 2011 alone.
The US government's assassination of Osama bin Laden -- the alleged mastermind of a horrific act of violence that led to the death of thousands of civilians -- was emotionally justifiable to most Americans. But its lack of civility and the simple premise -- which remained unchanged, despite variations in the official story -- that an unarmed man was attacked in his home, in front of his wife and children, struck many Americans as very un-American retaliation. Is one a superpower when one must resort to such tactics to take out the enemy?
And then there was last month's assassination of a US-born citizen living abroad. Anwar al-Awlaki wasn't even a foreigner. The fact of his eventual demise as a result of a US government political assassination was so well known that in 2010 his own father hired civil rights lawyers in the US to remove his son's name from the US government's targeted killings list.
Gone are the days of kangaroo courts, hangings and unintentional video leaks of those hangings, a la Saddam Hussein. Gone are the days of tragic accidents of air and ground transportation that involved leaders of foreign nations. Gone are the days of sudden illnesses followed by rapid death of high level foreign enemies.
verage of Clinton's speech.
Hillary Clinton Wants Gaddafi Killed
.....continued......
Obama and company, in contrast to their public distancing from Israel and its leaders, have quite comfortably eased their way into the same policy that Israel has proudly sponsored for decades: the state will sanction assassination of its political enemies and the world will be clear on who did it.
"'We hope he can be captured or killed soon so that you don't have to fear him any longer,' Clinton told students and others at a town hall-style gathering in the capital city [of Libya]," states the Associated Press coverage of Clinton's speech.
The characterization of this kind of statement is impossible with adjectives or adverbs -- such behavior can only be understood through an analogy. Just imagine if Moammar Gaddafi came to the United States, spoke at a university and said the same thing of Barack Obama. Granted, there may be a number of audience members who will be pleased with Mr. Gaddafi, but the vast majority will undoubtedly feel belittled and invaded. It's only human to react territorially when a visitor presumes to have free reign in your backyard.
The hubris, not only of the State Department's announcement of Gaddafi's potential assassination but of the world's greatest democracy violating its own laws has not been lost on Washington insiders who have, over time, debated the EO (knowing of its repeated violation), only to have it remain on the books to this day.
Discussions of the issue have led to elaborations of the law several times since Ford's 1976 EO. In 1978, President Carter's EO 12036 made it clear that "indirect" assassination would also not be undertaken by the US government and its agencies. Later, Executive Orders by President Reagan in 1981 (EO 12333), President Clinton in 2004 (EO 13355) and the second President Bush in 2008 (EO 13470), were also added to the list -- and violated.
These Executive Orders -- edicts that are no different in form, function or repercussion than any given US law -- were no doubt meant to convince someone that the US is not an international judge-jury-executioner, that it is a civilized nation with a civilized government.the line at such tactics.
The Obama administration has made it clear that that pretense is no longer of interest.
They've also made it clear that they take the American public for granted. It was only last week that the Obama administration publicly decried political assassinations.
The widely disputed account put forward by US Attorney General Holder that two Iranians (one of whom was rarely identified accurately in the media as what he really is: a US citizen of Iranian descent) allegedly tied to the Iranian government were intercepted while planning assassinations of two foreign ambassadors on US soil, seems even more dubious now.
From the looks of it, the top brass in Obama's administration don't exactly draw the line at such tactics.
Judge, Jury & Executioner of Foreign Leaders of countries with whom the US is NOT AT WAR?
Power Corrupts; Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely!
Hubris ... Unchained!
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Hillary Clinton says Libya's Muammar Gaddafi must be killed or captured
By Bani Walid
HeraldSun.com
October 19, 2011
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has hailed Libyan forces who ousted Muammar Gaddafi and vowed support for a democratic transition, on a surprise visit to Tripoli.
She flew in via Malta as Libya's new rulers try to crush the last pockets of resistance by fighters loyal to Gaddafi in his hometown of Sirte.
"This is Libya's moment. This is Libya's victory. The future belongs to you," she said overnight, eight months after Libyans rose up against the four-decade rule of Gaddafi, sparking a conflict that has killed thousands.
Addressing National Transition Council chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil and interim premier Mahmud Jibril, she said: "In crowded squares and mountain passes, you stood up against a dictator's aggression and claimed the rights and dignity of a free people ...
"The United States was proud to stand beside you in your fight for freedom and we will continue to stand with you as you continue this journey, respecting your sovereignty and honouring our friendship."
But she also warned against the perils of civil war.
"One factor we know must be confronted is unifying the various militias into a single military that represents the Libyan people," she told a press conference.
"Putting a national army and a police force under civilian command is essential."
Clinton, asked if Washington would cooperate with Libyan Islamists, said: "We will support a process of democratisation that respects the rule of law, that respects the rights of minority and women and allows for a free media."
The case also came up of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, the only man convicted for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet that killed 270 people when it blew up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.
Megrahi, who was said to have terminal cancer, was released from a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds in August 2009 and said to have only three months left to live.
Clinton was asked if Megrahi, who is still still alive and in Libya, should go back to jail. Rather than answer the question directly, she said: "I have said many times he should never be released."
She added that the US "will continue to pursue justice" on behalf of the Lockerbie victims.
Clinton was the first US cabinet official to visit Libya since September 2008, when her predecessor Condoleezza Rice met Gaddafi in what was a new stage in Washington's reconciliation with a former enemy state.
Rice's visit came five years after Gaddafi's dramatic announcement he was renouncing efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction.
"We recognise the bloody fighting continues ... NATO and the international coalition ... will continue to protect Libyan civilians until the threat from Gaddafi and those who hang to the past is ended," Clinton said.
Hillary Clinton says Libya's Muammar Gaddafi must be killed or captured
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She said that securing the large stocks of weaponry that had ended up in private hands during the uprising remained a primary concern.
"Even as the NATO mission continues to protect civilians, we are also responding to Libyan concerns about terrorism and loose weapons."
She said Washington already has more than a dozen expert advisers on the ground, helping Libya secure and destroy dangerous stockpiles of weapons and that the administration is working with Congress to provide $US40 million ($A39.52 million) to support that effort.
The United States is also looking into helping the Libyan government to secure and destroy chemical weapons stocks, said Clinton.
She urged a new Libya, where the rule of law prevails.
"You deserve a government that represents all Libyans, from all parts of the country, and all backgrounds, including women and young people.
"You deserve a transparent and fair judicial system. Revenge attacks and vigilantism have no place in the new Libya," she said.
Clinton's visit follows trips by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and foreign ministers from Britain, Italy, and Canada.
Speaking on the flight from Washington, a senior US State Department official said the United States aimed to forge new civilian ties with the Libyan people.
In the short term, he said the United States wants to provide assistance in caring for the thousands of war wounded.
It also wants to expand educational programs for Libyans and offer grants for developing archaeological sites that could help spur the development of the tourism sector.
More broadly, he said, the US wants to talk about "how to integrate Libya fully into the 21st century world economy in transparent ways where Libya's oil wealth is used for the benefit of all of Libya's citizens."
The official expressed hope the NTC leadership would follow through on its efforts to establish a centralised security system but admitted that not all militia leaders were yet participating and called it a "challenging process."
The official acknowledged concerns about civil war but said the tide was turning against Gaddafi.
"None of us know where Gaddafi is ... But he has people, henchmen, loyalists, sons, here and there, who still have circles around them," he said.
"I don't think there's any coordination going on between them. I think you are having pockets of people who are trying to stop the flow of history ahead," he said.
"He still is providing a lethal nuisance factor that is a distraction for many Libyans. But the people of Libya by large measure are already plotting ... the future of Libya without Gaddafi."
Speaking to students at the University of Tripoli, Clinton said: "The most important thing to do right now is to make sure that Gaddafi and his regime are finally prevented from disrupting the new Libya.
"But we hope he can be captured or killed soon, so you don't have to fear him any longer.
"Then you have to move forward," she said, urging the students not to waste time "trying to settle scores of the past."
Sri Lanka most improved in South Asia for doing business
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 20, Washington, DC: Sri Lanka is the most improved country in South Asia to do business, according to a new global survey by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and World Bank comparing 183 countries.
Sri Lanka climbed nine places from 98th to be ranked at the 89th place to do business according to "Doing Business 2012: Doing Business in a More Transparent World" report released Thursday.
India, the second best place to do business in South Asia, climbed seven places to be ranked 132nd best place.
The survey found that Sri Lanka implemented the most reforms of any of the eight economies in South Asia, helping to create a better environment for entrepreneurs.
The report presents quantitative indicators on business regulation and the protection of property rights for 183 economies�from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. The data are current as of June 2011.
"In South Asia the pace of regulatory reform remained steady over the past year. Sri Lanka and Bhutan were the most active. Sri Lanka implemented tax changes and tightened disclosure requirements for transactions involving a conflict of interest," noted the survey by International Finance Corporation (IFC) and World Bank.
The report noted that Sri Lanka Sri Lanka strengthened investor protections by requiring greater corporate disclosure on transactions between interested parties.
The South Asian island made paying taxes less costly for businesses by abolishing the turnover tax and social security contribution and by reducing corporate income tax, value added tax and national building tax rates, the global survey recorded.
Sri Lanka has made it easier to get credit by allowing out-of-court enforcement and distributing data on loans below 1% of income per capita. The country has allowed self-assessment for businesses to make it easier to pay taxes.
The IFC-World Bank report assesses regulations affecting domestic firms in 183 economies and ranks the economies in 10 areas of business regulation, such as starting a business, protecting investors, getting credit, resolving insolvency and trading across borders.
Among the South Asian countries, the low- and lower-middle-income economies of Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, and Nepal also improved business regulations for local firms, the report noted. In South Asia the pace of regulatory reform remained steady over the past year, according to the survey.
A new measure has shown that over the past 6 years, 94% of 174 economies covered by Doing Business have made their regulatory environment more business-friendly.
Hooray!
Arrest, Prosecute, Convict and Punish all those who AIDED & ABETTED the LTTE terrorists in the past.
Pursue them to the ENDS of the EARTH ... come HELL or HIGH WATER!
Don't forget the TNA leaders, yet unpunished for their TREASON, busily collaborating with Sri Lanka's enemies to undermine, destabilize and terrorize Sri Lanka ... AGAIN!
The UNPUNISHED are UNDETERRED.
.................
Sri Lanka AG indicts two associates of LTTE leader KP
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 20, Colombo: Sri Lanka's Attorney General Mrs. Eva Wanasundara has indicted tow associates of Former international wing leader and chief arms procurer of the LTTE, Kumaran Pathmanathan alias KP.
Colombo High Court Judge Deepali Wijesundara had ordered to hear the case against Ponniah Anandarajah, head of KP's financial section and Subramaniyam Sivakumar alias Rajan (42) today (20).
The two suspects have reportedly collected funds for LTTE for two and half years, since 2007, the inditement says
The suspects have been charged with collecting money for the LTTE, directing people for the purpose, giving instructions and conspiracy.
Another five suspects in the case have been summoned to the courts.
Bloggers,
Please shift over to Sujeewa Kokawala's new article.
Thanks!
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