By Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka
Island.lkMarch 06, 2012
The US resolution at the UN HRC in Geneva has deepened the schisms in Sri Lankan society. That resolution will have the same polarising function as did the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA), in defining each political tendency in the popular mind for a while to come.
Today the country is tragically dividing between those who accuse the Government of mounting protests against the US resolution at the UN HRC resolution against Sri Lanka as a diversion from issues of the rising cost of living, and those who claim that the demonstrations against the rising cost of living are wittingly or not, part of a foreign plot to de-stabilise the government which is defending national sovereignty.
That’s a debate easily resolved. If the government is using protests against the HRC resolution to mask the cost of living, that’s no excuse not to protest against such a resolution. Rather, it is a reason to protest either independently against that intrusive resolution while also protesting against the cost of living, or moving in parallel with the government on this issue while proceeding against it on the domestic front. Any other stance and tactic would only be tantamount to support of a move against one’s country; a move which has doubtless incensed the vast majority of or citizens.
Conversely, if oppositional protests (allegedly involving NGOs) are helping de-stabilise the government and undermine our defence of national sovereignty, then the answer surely is to cease and desist from those policies and actions that generate those protests, and to never meet such protests with responses that can only trigger more protests and international criticism which help the project of undermining our sovereignty.
The dominant elements of the centre-right Opposition, the UNP (apart from its ‘Reformists’, that is) opine that there is nothing wrong, or particularly anti-Sri Lankan, with a resolution that calls on the state to implement its own LLRC recommendations. The TNA has, after a sporadic show of realism, finally taken the line of the Tamil Diaspora’s pro-Tiger lobby by calling on the member states of the UNHRC to support the resolution. For the most part, the cosmopolitan civil society commentators are cheering the resolution on. On the left, the JVP opposes the resolution but opposes the government still more, on economic issues and dismissively terms the government’s anti-resolution mobilisation, a mere tactic. The breakaway Movement for People’s Struggle (Jana Aragala Vyaparaya) is strangely silent and submerged. Both these currents of the radical Left make no reference and give insufficient attention to the stand of China, Russia, Cuba and the NAM on the Resolution, and are ambiguous on the LLRC. For their part, the leftists within the government are firmly against the US move and for the LLRC’s implementation.
The reasoning of the Opposition’s leading ideologues is flawed. The problem with the resolution is not that it calls for the implementation of the LLRC recommendations. The problems are (a) where the Resolution is coming from, (b) the body of the text that precedes the seemingly innocuous points about the LLRC and (c) the sleight of hand where it expresses disappointment about the LLRC report and goes beyond it to issues of ‘accountability’. Furthermore, a resolution would provide a UN mandate – as was sought, and would have done, had we not outdrawn and shot it down at the UNHRC in May 2009. UN resolutions are notoriously elastic (Russia and China haven’t forgiven the endgame in Libya, behind the mask of UNSC 1973, meant to institute a no-fly zone for the protection of civilians in Benghazi). Even without the mandate of a resolution, the UN SG’s Panel of Experts report on Sri Lanka, originally meant to advise him on standards and norms of accountability, monstrously mutated into a 190 page indictment. The three ‘expert panellists’ co-authored a piece in the New York Times a few days ago, calling for stringent action on Sri Lanka by the UN HRC at this session, thereby amply demonstrating the partisan prejudice and politics of their project.
Certainly the implementation of reform recommendations of the LLRC report must be fast-tracked, and a compressed time–frame committed to by the government, preferably so swiftly as to pre-empt the US resolution by removing its purported basis. Even if it fails in prevention, this would help us rally the support to defeat it. However, this commitment must be made to and in the Sri Lankan Parliament. The Government of the Republic of Sri Lanka is primarily responsible to the citizens of Sri Lanka. That is what popular sovereignty in a res publica, a republic, is about. The popularly elected government of Sri Lanka is not responsible in the first or last instance to any international forum or intergovernmental body comprised of governments responsible to their respective citizenries. Sri Lanka’s Opposition may do well to move a resolution demanding a time frame and suggesting one for the implementation of the LLRC report. The push or indeed drive for implementation of reform must be from within our society, with the international solidarities and multipliers of our choosing.
I rather doubt that the vast majority of Sri Lankan people want Karunanidhi, Jayalalitha and Vaiko, still less the Tiger flag waving demonstrators who will camp in Geneva from March 5th to the 23rd, to help guarantee and hasten the implementation of the LLRC reforms. With support like this, the LLRC does not need enemies.
None in Sri Lanka and India, who were supportive of the war against the LTTE, are on the side of the resolution. Conversely, those who practised appeasement of the LTTE, were against the war, were fellow travellers of the Tigers (e.g. Vaiko, the TNA) or were lukewarm and vacillating with regard the war and considered Mahinda Rajapaksa a greater enemy than Prabhakaran, are all supportive of the resolution. This congruity, and the presence of Tiger flag bearing demonstrators outside the UN HRC in Geneva, will not be lost on the vast mass of the Sri Lankan people. The people will also remember who in the world community stands with and who stands against a Resolution which has so greatly roused the enthusiasm of the Diaspora Tigers.
As for accountability, the number of civilians killed in North Vietnam by the US bombing campaign named Rolling Thunder, commencing February 1965, was 182,000. The number of children who died in the sanctions on Iraq, according to Denis Halliday, the administrator of that programme who resigned in disgust, was 5,000 a month. Guantanamo, the vast prison camp located on the soil of a foreign country against the wishes of that country, still remains open despite a presidential pledge to close it. The National Defence Authorisation Act has provisions only describable as draconian.
These are the guys whose draft resolution seeks to preach to us about the observance of international law in the fight against terrorism? Of course it must, but who are they to tell us that, when they are serially responsible for the most egregious violations of international law, ranging from the invasion of sovereign states on false pretexts, to the practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’. Doesn’t the hypocrisy just get to you? And if it does not, what does that say about you?
In my closing remarks at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva after the special session on Sri Lanka in May 2009, I equated the allegation of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Sri Lanka, with the charge that Iraq possessed WMDs and asked whether we should buy a used car from the guys who sold the world the Goebbelsian Big Lie on WMD.
None of this is to say that all is well in Sri Lanka; far from it. Let me explain by way of analogy. A stable functional piece of furniture usually needs four legs. If it is to rest firmly, it needs these four legs to be even. Politics and political discourses in Sri Lanka remind me of furniture which either doesn’t have four legs or which have one or more legs shorter than the others.
Analogous to the four legs of a piece of furniture, the four pillars that a strong successful state and a good society must rest upon equally, are national sovereignty, popular sovereignty, individual rights and self-determination.
National sovereignty means that a nation-state (or a pluri-national state) is a political unit or community entitled to its unity and territorial integrity, and has the right to determine its own path, regulate its own affairs, without external domination, intervention or interference in its internal affairs.
Popular sovereignty means that the right to rule rests with the people, who decide who rules, how and for how long. If the rulers violate this social contract, this sacred trust, the people have the right to replace, even overthrow them. The Sri Lankan Constitution makes explicit that as a republic, sovereignty is vested in the people, who exercise it through a regularly and periodically elected Executive president and legislature.
Individual rights pertain to the sovereign individual person; to the equality of every citizen, who is inalienably possessed of a stock of rights and freedoms which must not be transgressed upon.
Self-determination refers to the right of a collective to determine its own destiny. The structural coordinates of that collective or community impose limitations upon the degree to which the right of self determination is exercised. The right to set up an independent state belongs to a nation, not a national minority. An established nation-state possesses the right of self determination. The entire (multiethnic) nation and not one part of it, is the legitimate agency of self determination. A nation which is under colonial occupation or annexation has the right of self determination (e.g. Occupied Palestine). An ethno-national minority, on the other hand, has a structurally more limited right to self governance and self administration, which may be termed the right to autonomy.
A society must rest on the equal recognition of all four of these principles, rights and fundamental values. Though at different points of history, one or the other may find itself emphasised due to the threats posed and the tasks at hand, all four must be held in equilibrium; never abandoned or counter-posed to one another.
This may require much struggle, change, transformation. But that will be undertaken one way or another, by the sovereign citizens of Sri Lanka at a time and on issues of their choosing, and with the solidarity of allies of their choice.
Shadow of LTTE Terror Documentary Video
178 comments:
My Comment at LankaWeb.com:
Ben_Silva,
I agree with you that we should stop being passive in defending Sri Lanka, but if you are referring to Buddhism as one of the "Indian myths and religions" we should "dump" ... I have to strongly disagree.
Buddhism is at the heart and soul of who we are; it is inextricably intertwined with our image of ourselves. We recognize it as something great at good that we are fortunate enough to have inherited.
The personality of the Sinhala Buddhist has two aspects: 1. the aggressive aspect of the Sinhala warrior: warlike, brave, quick to anger, and 2. the moderating aspect of the Buddhist: introspective, regretful, wanting to avoid conflict, and concerned about acting justly. Like the fight and flight responses of every human being, these two aspects of the Sinhala personality are essential to our survival. Buddhism counsels patience and tolerance, the Sinhala traits compels us to confront and fight. Without the moderating influence of Buddhism, the Sinhala warrior is doomed to failure in perpetual war. Without the courage and willingness to sacrifice oneself defending one's people and their freedoms, the Buddhist disciple would soon become extinct.
This is the dilemma of every religion: we humans are compelled to violate our religious teachings in order to survive, and indeed will have long become extinct if we had done so. The religion presents an ideal that we can never be fully attain, but nevertheless it remains the standard that we must aspire to, if we are to achieve greatness through co-existence in our societies.
Buddhism is the unifying humanizing influence in Sri Lanka, responsible for every aspect of our cultural advancement in our history, underpinning the Golden Ages of Sri Lanka, and our greatest accomplishments as a people. Personally, I think that Buddhism is among the most rational and logical of religions. For that reason, it is adopted by many scientists and rational thinkers because its teachings are consistent with the latest scientific advances.
It is the Buddhist climate of tolerance, compassion and non-discrimination deeply embedded in the Buddhist majority of Sri Lanka that is responsible for much of the social equity and progress that we see in Sri Lanka today. It is that mindset that has led to a high literacy rate, compulsory education of children, basic healthcare for all, low mortality of infants, public transportation and electricity accessible to all, equal opportunity for all in employment without discrimination by caste, race, sex or wealth; all achieved after 1948 when Sri Lanka regained its hallowed crown.
In comparison to Hindu majority India, which became independent at the same time as Sri Lanka, where casteism and discrimination is endemic, literacy rate hovers around 50%, women can rarely exercise equal rights, land is still monopolized by the zamindars, and poverty is rampant, Sri Lanka is a paradise of tolerance and social equity. The social gains of the last 64 years, has superbly equipped the people Sri Lankan to become the citizens of the New Wonder of Asia, notwithstanding a 30 year civil war that has now been ended.
The main difference between India and Sri Lanka is that in Sri Lanka a Buddhist mindset prevailed: a mindset that supported the distribution of national benefits to all of its people, irrespective of community. The majority religion sets the tone for social equity in every society; in Sri Lanka Buddhism played that role. If the majority religion is progressive and tolerant, the people will progress ... as they did in Sri Lanka.
My Comment at LankaWeb.com:
.....continued.....
Every religion comes from somewhere. We are fortunate that we inherited Buddhism from India long ago and had the wisdom to protect and preserve this quintessentially modern religion that is compatible with social trends we see in the world today.
On the other hand, I agree with you about the need to aggressively protect our freedoms and our Sri Lankan ways from the foreign powers pursuing their Neo-Colonialists self-serving agendas by overt and covert means, as in the bad old days of uninhibited colonialism.
Christianity as originally taught by Jesus Christ is a message of love and tolerance. That is the Christian ideal. But yet, in practice we saw the conquistadors of the past, in collusion with the missionaries of the day, with the sword in one hand and the bible in the other, conquering foreign lands with unspeakable violence, murder and pure avarice for their wealth. It is not without reason that until recently Sri Lankan mothers silenced crying babies saying "Hush, the Puruthugisi are coming to get you!" That is one aspect of Christianity. Another aspect of, Christianity was their protection of ordinary people, and in counseling moderation to the nobles, in post-Roman Europe, and preserving the knowledge and civilization of the vanished Roman civilization to pass on to future generations during the Dark Ages. They also brought together Christian peoples to act together in their common defence against marauding Vikings, Tartars and Moslems.
The role played by the Christian clergy in Europe paralleled the role of the Buddhist clergy in Sri Lanka, in that they preserved Buddhist teachings, were almost the sole custodians of knowledge, and disseminators of education to the laymen. Very often they were the doctors of the day, who bound and cared for the sick. Perhaps more importantly, they moderated the excesses of the kings and nobles by invoking the teachings of the Lord Buddha, and were instrumental in bringing the Sri Lankan people together to defend their country in times of war to repel foreign invaders. They did not derive this authority among the people from anything other than what they represented to the people: the living memory of their roots, their history, and everything that was dear to a proud and ancient people.
No ... I do not agree at all that Buddhism was, or is, a mythical Indian religion that we should dump. Buddhism unifies our people, moderates their actions, and gives them the courage to defend their country against all odds.
Culture of intolerance
Opinion Editorial
TheHindu.com
March 10, 2012
It takes only a few people to give a whole State and country a bad name. Tamil chauvinist outfits working on the fringes of the political mainstream in Tamil Nadu have been organising protests and carrying out attacks against visiting Sri Lankan officials and academics in the guise of drawing attention to the Sri Lankan government's failure to ensure the rights of its Tamil citizens. Often, ordinary Sri Lankans on private visits have been the target of these groups claiming to act on behalf of the people of Tamil Nadu. In the latest instance, activists of Naam Tamizhar Iyakkam and May 17 Movement forced Jeeva Niriella, an academic from Sri Lanka, to cut short her participation in a function at the Manonmaniam Sundaranar University in Tirunelveli. Ms Niriella was an invited guest of the university, but, quite shockingly, the university registrar apologised to the protestors for having allowed her to attend the event held as part of the International Women's Day celebrations. That a handful of self-righteous individuals can compel a university to back off in this fashion speaks poorly not only of the university authorities, but also of the law enforcing machinery in the State. If not checked immediately, such instances can quickly lead to a culture of intolerance in Tamil Nadu, risking its reputation for peace and hospitality.
Sadly, the role of the Tamil Nadu government in dealing with episodes like these has been truly problematic. Chief Minister Jayalalithaa was well within her rights to insist that the Centre inform the State government about visits by Sri Lankan VIPs and other dignitaries to Tamil Nadu. Prior intimation would help the local authorities take precautionary security measures. But, in her letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Ms Jayalalithaa went on to urge the Government of India to discourage “such frequent visits” and allow such visits only after consulting the State government. Ms Jayalalithaa's stand appears to have emboldened the activists of fringe groups. Many people in Tamil Nadu and elsewhere in India have genuine concerns over the conduct of the Sri Lankan government in dealing with the rights of Sri Lankan Tamils. But this cannot be used as an excuse to target any and all Sri Lankans visiting the State, whether pilgrims, intellectuals or dignitaries. Ironically, some of those assaulted have been Tamils from across the Palk Strait. There are appropriate bilateral and multilateral forums and channels to raise issues such as the rights of Tamils in Sri Lanka. Little would be achieved by viewing anything and everything relating to Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans through this single prism.
Comment on "The Hindu" Editorial above:
From: Dr. Simon Gajendran
Posted on: Mar 10, 2012 at 05:47 IST
The Hindu has rightfully highlighted this ugly scenario in TamilNadu. Basically, it does not take rocket-science to realize that TamilNadu's agenda has been hi-jacked by the violent, intolerant Tamil separatists from Sri Lanka (yes, the very same LTTE extremists/terrorists who massacred thousands of our Indian soldiers by burning them alive when captured). If India turns a blind eye to this fast growing ugly intolerance in TamilNadu, then soon India too will be paying a hefty price - simply because those intolerant, violent and bigoted separatists from Sri Lanka will encourage TamilNadu to to take up arms against India and the "Indian Establishment" that refuses to buy-into their repulsive agenda. Today we have enough extremists/terrorists groups in our country without adding to that list - through our shameful negligence. That aside, yes, it is truly pathetic how these unchecked racist-communalists are today giving India a bad name.
My Comment at TheHindu.com:
Dr. Simon Gajendran clearly understands the threats posed by these Racist Communalists not only to India, but to Sri Lanka as well.
What both India and Western Powers harrying Sri Lanka have to understand is this: Sri Lanka is committed to Equal Rights for ALL of its people, but will ensure that through ways that do not place either the integrity of Sri Lanka or peace among its people at risk. The US and India wants Sri Lanka to ensure fairness by devolving power to racist separatists, but do not adhere to that principles when their own countries have to cope with such risks. For example, the US waged a Civil War to preserve the Union, and India will not devolve power to Kashmir separatists.
Sri Lanka will not devolve power on ethnic, religious, linguistic, caste, or sex COMMUNAL bases to any region or community. That is a prescription for National Suicide that will pit Sri Lanka's communities against each other.
Clash with Iran could see use of huge, new U.S. bomb
March 09, 2012
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A 30,000-pound (13,600-kg) bunker buster bomb designed to smash through some 200 feet of concrete before exploding is a "great weapon" that could be used by U.S. forces in a clash with Iran over its nuclear program, an Air Force general said on Thursday.
Lieutenant General Herbert Carlisle, Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations, said the massive ordnance penetrator, which the military began receiving only last year, is part of the U.S. arsenal available for strikes against countries like Iran, which has some buried nuclear facilities.
"The massive ordnance penetrator is a great weapon. We are continuing to improve that. It has great capability now and we are continuing to make it better. It is part of our arsenal and it will be a potential if we need it in that kind of scenario," Carlisle told a conference on U.S. defense programs.
The Pentagon has begun working on military options if sanctions and diplomacy fail to prevent Tehran from building a nuclear weapon.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the National Journal in an interview on Thursday that planning had been going on "for a long time."
Major powers are increasingly concerned about Iran's nuclear enrichment program, which they view as an attempt to build an atomic weapon. But Tehran says it is meant for peaceful energy production.
Israel also is worried about potential for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a visit to Washington this week that time was running out for diplomacy and sanctions.
"HELL OF A BIGGER IMPACT"
Panetta, who has said diplomacy and sanctions should be given more time, told the National Journal he did not think Israel had decided whether to order a high-risk raid on Iran's nuclear sites.
He said the United States was committed to preventing Iran from acquiring atomic weapons and would have a greater impact than Israel if it decided force was necessary.
"If they decided to do it there's no question that it would have an impact, but I think it's also clear that if the United States did it we would have a hell of a bigger impact," Panetta said.
The tough rhetoric from the Pentagon came despite President Barack Obama's effort this week to tamp down "loose talk" and "bluster" about possible military action, saying there was still an opportunity for diplomacy.
Carlisle also told the Credit Suisse-McAleese defense conference that a conflict with Syria or Iran could see U.S. military operations influenced by new tactical thinking at the Pentagon known as Air-Sea Battle.
That approach aims to take advantage of highly networked and integrated U.S. forces.
Carlisle said the tactics focus on operating in multiple domains, from air and sea to space and cyberspace, while networking and integrating information from the different areas, like satellites and sensors on stealth fighters and unmanned aircraft.
"There's a space capability, there's a cyber capability, there's fifth-generation, low-signature force capability," he said.
"All those things are on the table and being thought about as we do this operational planning," Carlisle added, noting that Syria and Iran have developed significant defenses aimed at keeping potential attackers at a distance, a strategy Air-Sea Battle was designed to circumvent.
Carlisle said cyberspace could be a factor in a conflict with the two countries.
"All of the leadership has said nothing is off the table with respect to what we would employ and use," he said.
(Reporting By David Alexander; Editing by Xavier Briand; Desking by Eric Walsh)
Sunila Abeysekara is another Sri Lankan TRAITOR undermining her native land.
Shame!
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Member states in UNHRC 'deeply divided'
BBC.com
March 08, 2012
Sri Lanka’s human rights issue are causing huge divisions in the United Nations.
The member states of the United Nations Human Rights Council are currently informally debating a resolution which was sponsored by the United States following Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war, and it’s causing strong disagreements between them.
Speaking to BBC Sandeshaya, human rights activist Sunila Abeysekera who has been observing the debates in Geneva said “divisions between countries in the Human Rights Council became apparent when they debated the draft resolution on Sri Lanka.”.
We stood for a stronger resolution and after heavy bargaining the countries managed to reach this position. There’s a lot more talking to do
Sunila Abeysekara
The Americans have sponsored a draft resolution, calling for the Sri Lankan government to implement recommendations in the Lesson Leaned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). The LLRC was appointed by the Sri Lankan government to investigate alleged human rights abuses during the final days of the civil war.
The Americans now want the recommendations in the LLRC report to be implemented and for the Sri Lankan government to present a comprehensive plan to address alleged violations.
But during the debate, Pakistan, speaking on behalf of the Non Align Movement, made it clear that the Sri Lankan government should given more time to implement an action plan to reconcile.
India silent
China, Russia, Algeria, Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand stood against the resolution, but India, African countries and Latin American nations remained silent.
Meanwhile, the European Union stressed the need of a stronger resolution that would make Sri Lanka more accountable for alleged human rights abuses, but stopped short of submitting any amendments to the resolution.
However, human rights groups are disappointed with the resolution. Sunila Abeysekara described it as “watered down”.
“We stood for a stronger resolution and after heavy bargaining the countries managed to reach this position. There’s a lot more talking to do.”
Meanwhile, the human rights watchdog, Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) which supports the resolution, described it as conducive to promote the rule of law in Sri Lanka. They encouraged everyone to participate in the debate constructively and to support the resolution, seeing it as a window of opportunity to bring about improvements in Sri Lanka.
The resolution is expected to be tabled on March 23rd.
Sri Lanka's abject poverty levels declining
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 09, Colombo: Sri Lanka has recorded the lowest number of persons suffering from abject poverty in the Asian region, Housing and Engineering Services Minister Wimal Weerawansa has said.
Addressing a tree planting ceremony in Ratmalana, Minister Weerawansa has observed that the country's economic indicators were on a positive path and that poverty levels were on the decline.
According to the World Bank data Sri Lanka has recorded the lowest number of persons suffering from severe levels of poverty among the South Asian countries.
The Minister has pointed out that the number of persons suffering from abject poverty in Sri Lanka stood at 7% while it was 32.7% in neighboring India.
World Bank poverty and equity data released for 2012 indicated that the poverty headcount ratio which is the percent of population earning below US $1.25 a day (PPP) in Sri Lanka declined from a 14% in 2002 to a 7% in 2007.
Similarly, in Sri Lanka people living below national poverty line declined form 15% in 2007 to 9% in 2010.
Elsewhere in the South Asian region 43.3% in Bangladesh in 2010 earned below US$ 1.25 per day while Pakistan recorded 21% in 2008. In Nepal 24.8% of the population earned less than US$ 1.25.
Sri Lanka recorded the second highest per capita income of US$ 2,240 in the region in 2010. Maldives topped the record with US$ 5,750 per capita income. India's per capita income stood at US$ 1,330 while the other countries in the region stood below US$ 1,000.
LTTE declining fast in Germany
By Shirajiv SIRIMANE in Berlin
DailyNews.lk
March 10, 2012
The LTTE and its sympathisers are fast fading in Germany. Several attempts made by them to raise funds by holding campaigns have failed, said Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Berlin, Sarath Kongahage.
In an interview with the Daily News, Kongahage said that the Sri Lankan community in Germany is around 60,000, of which around 8,000 are Tamils. LTTE sympathisers tried to hold a protest to coincide with Sri Lanka’s Independence Day on February 4.
They wanted to hold a mass protest and tarnish the image of Sri Lanka. However, their plans were a utter failure as only eight people turned out for the event,‘‘ he said.
He said that the Sri Lankan community too organised themselves and had a separate event. He said that one of the main reasons for this is that the Tamil population in Germany knows that government is keen to safeguard the rights of the Tamils and they are being protected and looked after well.
“They also know about the massive development that is taking place in the North East which has opened up new avenues of employment and better living standards,” ambassador Kongahage said.
“Sri Lanka and Germany have been having diplomatic ties for a long time and Germany is the third largest tourism feeder to Sri Lanka after India and the UK. Germans are keen on Sri Lankan Blue sapphires and a special Blue Sapphire stamp too was issued recently” he said.
Bravo! Here is a great move towards Ethnic and Religious Integration of Sri Lanka ... as we have repeated called for at this blog.
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Sri Lanka to abolish ethnic and religious divisions in schools
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 10, Colombo: The Sri Lankan government has decided to abolish the ethnic and religious divisions in the island's schools, the Ministry of Education sources say.
According to the amendments to the laws, children will be able to receive education from any school island wide irrespective of their ethnicity and the religion.
The proposal has been brought sometimes back but it was not implemented due to protests from the past students' associations of some schools, the sources said.
Sri Lanka's government schools are open for students of all races and religions but some private schools maintain restrictions on other communities.
Most of such schools give priority to the children of the followers of certain minority religions of Sri Lanka.
The GOSL should help expand the customer base for tea in foreign countries to assist small tea farmers at this time.
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Sri Lanka's tea small holders warn of a breakdown in the industry
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 10, Colombo: Tea small holders in Sri Lanka warn that the industry is facing a severe threat due to the fall in the prices of tea.
Head of the Federation of Tea Small Holders' Associations, Lal Premanath says that tea small holders would face difficulties in continuing with the plantations if the tea prices continue to fall.
The tea industry in Sri Lanka has been badly affected due to the political turmoil in some of its main export markets like Iran, Syria, Libya and Iraq.
The tea small holders have said that the current prices of tea leaves in the market did not cover their production costs.
Premanath called on the government to immediately intervene and address the crisis faced by the tea sector in the country.
There are currently 300,000 tea small holders in the country and they contribute immensely to the country's economy, he said.
According to Premanath, the tea small holders are faced with a double whammy due to the increase in fuel prices at a time when local tea prices have dropped.
My Comment at LankaWeb.com
Ananda-USA Says:
March 10th, 2012 at 2:40 pm
The compilation of the evidence available on the TREASONOUS and CRIMINAL acts of the Tiger Nominated Agents of the TNA should be undertaken first to support PROSECUTION, CONVICTION and PUNISHMENT of the TNA.
It is only after these steps have been taken, and the TNA is convicted, that the GOSL can take the necessary steps to BAN the TNA as a part of that PUNISHMENT.
There is ample evidence of the TNA serving as an LTTE proxy, of collaborating with foreign Eelamis such as Vaiko in the Wanni, of asking foreign countries (India, US, EU) to intervene militarily in Sri Lanka, of supporting the use of children as child soldiers and human bombs, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
In addition to PROSECUTING the TNA under CURRENT TREASON and CRIMINAL laws, the GOSL should ENACT and strictly ENFORCE a NEW national law that bans ALL political parties and organizations (such as the TNA, SLMC and the JHU) pursuing COMMUNAL agendas that divide society along communal lines, pit different communities against each other by demanding special rights based on communal attributes, and disrupt the peace.
Sri Lanka criticizes international community's silence during LTTE terror
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 10, Gampaha: Certain countries, which remained silent during the 30 years of unspeakable terror unleashed by the Tamil Tiger terrorists group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) with suicide bombs and mass murders of civilians, are now trying to prosecute Sri Lanka for human rights violations after the government eliminated the terror, Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa pointed out today.
Noting that some members of the international community are thinking of human rights only when the killings no longer take place, the President said after defeat of terrorism killings of youth from all communities have stopped and the people are once again able to live freely in an undivided country that belongs to everyone.
President Rajapaksa underlined that activities by powerful countries in the world destroy scores of civilians and world bodies are silent on those.
Addressing a ceremony to open the Anura Bandaranaike memorial ward and the Blood Bank of the Wathupitiwala hospital in Gampaha, President Rajapaksa said creating coexistence and a healthy nation inculcating good virtues in people's hearts will be the government's view.
Emphasizing that the government always implements development programs giving priority to education and health, the President noted that it was possible to focus attention on development after liberating the country from terrorists.
The construction work of the memorial ward at a cost of 83.5 million rupees was funded by the Anura Bandaranaike memorial fund.
The 4th death anniversary of Anura Bandaranaike who was a former Parliamentarian, Minister, Opposition Leader and a Speaker will be held on March 16.
Venerable Dr. Pannila Ananda Thero, Deputy Minister Sarana Gunawardena, the Medical Superintendent of the Wathupitiwala Hospital Dr. Sisira Wijesundara and several others addressed the function.
(Photos by Sudath Silva)
Janatha Party leader has pointed out that India's support for the resolution at the UNHRC will make India vulnerable to similar resolutions in the future over Kashmir or Manipur.
BULLS EYE!
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India should not support resolution against Sri Lanka - Janatha Party leader
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 10, New Delhi: India's Janatha Party leader Subramanian Swamy has said that the center government should not support the "one-sided" resolution against Sri Lanka tabled by the United States at the United Nations Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva.
The Janatha Party leader has pointed out that India's support for the resolution at the UNHRC will make India vulnerable to similar resolutions in the future over Kashmir or Manipur for which according to Swamy extremist forces are already active in seeking to discredit the Indian government.
Swamy has suggested that instead of joining the human rights groups and Western nations, India should urge Sri Lanka to devolve power and meet the legitimate aspirations of Tamils in the country.
"Indian Government (should) not succumb to the machinations of human rights groups in the UN Human Rights Commission's meeting tomorrow in Geneva by supporting an ill-advised resolution condemning Sri Lanka for alleged human rights excesses in its war against the LTTE terrorists," Swamy has said in a statement according to the PTI.
The Janatha Party leader has pointed out that the resolution completely failed to mention the LTTE atrocities against the civilians.
"The resolution is one sided and appears to have deliberately suppressed the horrendous human rights excesses committed by the LTTE over the last 20 years," PTI quoted the Janata Party chief said.
Swamy has suggested the Indian Government with the help of US and China to urge Sri Lanka to decentralize power to meet the legitimate aspirations of Tamils.
"India may seek to bring a compromise resolution after consultation with the US and China to urge the Sri Lankan President Rajapakse to devolve power by constitutional amendment to meet the legitimate aspirations of the Tamil citizens of Sri Lanka," Swamy has said.
Meanwhile, the Tamil political parties in Tamil Nadu including Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa's AIADMK and former Chief Minster M. Karunanidhi's DMK have urged the center government to support the resolution that may pave the way for an international investigation on alleged war crimes committed by Sri Lankan security forces during the final stages of war with the LTTE.
Sweeping Reforms? NONSENSE!
The US resolution is the THIN END OF THE WEDGE. They are trying to leverage the LLRC now, and intend to be much TOUGHER later with the “war crimes” charges and “devolution of power” to the Tamil separatists.
There will be NO RELIEF from these activities for Sri Lanka by acceding to the US, no matter how much we bend over backwards. If we do that, we will lose our shirt now, and our underwear later.
The underlying MOTIVE is not related to “democracy” and “human rights” PRETEXTS at all, but to the global agenda of preventing the growth and power of China, and to a lesser extent India, in the competition for limited global resources and markets in the future.
The only way out is for the GOSL define Sri Lanka’s National Policy in a manner that is perfectly fair to all and cannot be accused of discriminating against anyone or community, is geared to protecting national integrity, and the creation of ONE Nation, of ONE People, sharing ONE national Destiny.
To this end, the GOSL should lay down a coherent internally-consistent Policy for National Integration as follows:
1. The goal is a vibrant free-market democracy with equal rights and equal responsibilities for the citizens.
2. No power should be devolved to any community or region on the basis of communal attributes; Sri Lanka recognizes only equal citizenship as the basis for any and all benefits.
3. Community diversity should be relegated to its proper place in the private sphere of individuals lives and homes; not the public sphere of governance, employment, education, business etc.
4. Provincial councils should be dissolved in favour of smaller Districts administered directly by the central government because large regional administrations threaten the government and the integrity of the nation. The 13th Amendment will be repealed in its entirety.
5. The entire franchise enjoyed by the people should be to elect their representatives to Parliament on a one-adult-one-vote basis. MPs will be empowered more than they are now to deliver an equitable share of national income and benefits to their constituencies with adequate oversight to ensure proper legitimate deployment of those resources.
6. A National Integration Policy geared towards creating a uniform demographic distribution in the country should be adopted and pursued to increase the empathy between communities, and to eliminate regional concentration that lead to separatist movements.
Such a Policy is demonstrably fair to all communities and will yield the democracy and human rights of the West that they view as the “holy grail”, but it is fundamentally different from the federalist approach of devolving power to disparate communities in the fond hope that there will be sufficient incentive to stay within the union after they have been devolved power.
................
Sweeping reforms, including Senate, for reconciliation
SundayTimes.lk
March 11, 2012
A proposed National Policy on Reconciliation calls for an amendment to the Constitution to create a Senate. Legislation in particular areas should require the consent of two thirds of the Senate in addition to two thirds of Parliament or the First Chamber.
This is one of the highlights of a set of proposals formulated by the Presidential Advisor on Reconciliation, Rajiva Wijesinha. He has been assisted in the task by law lecturer Salma Yusuf.
This 12-page report notes that the current time frame provided in the Constitution to get the constitutionality of proposed legislation verified by the Supreme Court is grossly inadequate. It says that the government should make endeavours to reach a consensus on an appropriate constitutional amendment to provide an adequate time frame to challenge proposed legislation.
Sweeping reforms, including Senate, for reconciliation
.....continued.....
Here are other significant highlights among the recommendations. The Government shall make every effort to give full effect to the Interim and Final Recommendations of the LLRC so as to maintain the confidence of the people in the reconciliation process.
The Government shall work comprehensively and cohesively to implement the National Action Plan on Human Rights that has been adopted by Cabinet, with particular attention to improving the capacities of and faith in the police, to ensuring better protection mechanisms for women and children, and to streamlining the judicial system to promote confidence in its operations.
* The State shall put in place mechanisms that facilitate the acknowledgement of losses and suffering on all sides, accompanied by expressions of empathy and solidarity.
* Recognizing that the ensuing minority grievances stem from deficiencies in the system of administration and lack of good governance that affect all citizens regardless of ethnicity, will ensure that every citizen who has a grievance out of any executive or administrative act, particularly those based on ethnicity or religion, should have the right to seek redress before an independent institution.
* In order to ensure that there is no political interference in the public service and that recruitment and promotions in the public service are in conformity with the equality provisions in the Constitution, the Government shall work towards the establishment of an Independent Public Service Commission without delay. Measures shall also be taken to ensure the independence of the judiciary and the police with regard to the appointment process as well as in their functioning.
* Efforts should be made to make the public service and the police inclusive of all communities with special attention to ensuring adequate representation of the population in any area.
* Ensuring at least bilingualism in the public service and other professions serving the public, whilst nationally the culture of trilingualism should be fostered by making passes in any two of the National Languages compulsory, along with Mathematics, at the GCE Ordinary Level Examination
Attempt to influence UNHRC delegates: Expatriate LTTE cadres hell bent on revenge
By P. Krishnaswamy
SundayObserver.lk
March 11, 2012
Many expatriate LTTE cadres, including an NGO activist are in Geneva canvassing support for the US-backed resolution on Sri Lanka and are holding meetings and hosting lavish parties in an effort to influence delegates at the UNHRC sessions, Deputy Minister of Child Development and Women’s Affairs M.L.A.M. Hisbullah told the Sunday Observer.
They are the least worried in the welfare of their people back home and are hell bent on taking revenge because their leader and patron Velupillai Prabhakaran was eliminated, the Deputy Minister said.
Hisbullah, a member of the Sri Lankan delegation to Geneva last week said that he had met some expatriate LTTE cadres and tried to convince them about the major development work that has been undertaken in the North and the East and the peaceful communal harmony and brotherhood that has been restored after LTTE terrorism was eradicated three years ago. Nevertheless these LTTE cadres are hell bent on destabilising the democratically elected Government as an act of vengeance for eliminating the LTTE, he said. They continue to raise funds from the Tamil diaspora and their sympathisers have millions of dollars at their disposal, he said.
Most of them are now members of NGOs that propagate separatism, he said.
He apprised them that over 11,000 LTTE cadres held previously in detention camps have been released and reintegrated into their community.
He told them that displaced Tamil families had returned to their traditional professions in their own villages and major development work, including the provision of infrastructure, employment opportunities and enhanced educational facilities, have been provided. The fact that the Attorney General would submit a report relating to the charges in the LLRC Report against persons, the Army has set up a Court Martial, the Navy has begun holding inquiries and investigations, the possible aspects of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that can be implemented and the time that is needed were also explained to them, Hisbullah said. However, they appear to be guided by arrogance and believe that fund-raising is far easier for them that promising the utopian Eelam, Hisbullah said.
Comment by Shenali Waduge at LankaWeb.com:
shenali Says:
March 11th, 2012 at 6:56 am
Article 157A of the 6th Amendment to the Constitution under the Heading “Prohibition against violation of territorial integrity of Sri Lanka” clearly states the following:
157A. (1) No person shall, directly or indirectly, in or outside Sri Lanka, support, espouse, promote, finance, encourage or advocate the establishment of a separate State within the territory of Sri Lanka.
(2) No political party or other association or organisation shall have as one of its aims or objects the establishment of a separate State within the territory of Sri Lanka.
(3) Any person who acts in contravention of the provisions of paragraph (1) shall, on conviction by the Court of Appeal, after trial on indictment and according to such procedure as may be prescribed by law,—
The punishment for a Member of Parliament / Political Party or other association or Organization is also clearly given.
(d) if he is a Member of Parliament or a person in such service or holding such office as is referred to in paragraph (1) of Article 165, cease to be such Member or to be in such service or to hold such office
(4) Where any political party or other association or organisation has as one of its aims or objects the establishment of a separate State within the territory of Sri Lanka, any person may make an application to the Supreme Court for a declaration that such political party or other association or organisation has as one of its aims or objects the establishment of a separate State within the territory of Sri Lanka. The Secretary or other officer of such political party or other association or organisation shall be made a respondent to such application.
Please read this section for anyone who is interested…. ACTION SHOULD HAVE BEEN TAKEN AGAINST THE TNA long long years ago…it is not too late still…
Comment at LankaWeb.com.
Ananda-USA Says:
March 11th, 2012 at 1:37 pm
As Shenali points out, Sri Lanka’s Constitution prohibits Separatist activities by both individuals and organizations, political or non-political.
These provisions in Sri Lanka’s highest legal document … the Constitution … that declares SEPARATISM to be TREASON are in addition to other provisions in Sri Lankan law against both TREASON & CRIMINALITY.
However, as I understand it, COMMUNAL organizations that demonize segments of society and pit them against each other by demanding special rights unavailable to other citizens are not yet illegal. These organizations and individuals create the dissatisfaction and the societal conditions necessary for subsequent calls for a separate existence, and if necessary, an armed struggle to attain it.
The TNA, in contrast to the SunGod’s heyday, is now saying they are not asking for a physically separate state, but “only for autonomy” within a unified Sri Lanka.
All of their activities in support of that autonomy, however, constitute special rights for Tamils-only, that supplement the equal rights they already enjoy as Sri Lankan citizens. Therefore, they are fundamentally communal and racist in nature and are creating discord in society.
For that reason, a NEW law, prohibiting such communal activities that generate discord between communities through their demands for special rights that would be discriminatory towards other citizens is urgently needed.
However, as I pointed out before, the laws against TREASONOUS and CRIMINAL activities already on the books in Sri Lanka are sufficient to PROSECUTE, CONVICT and PUNISH the TNA on the basis of EXISTING & AVAILABLE evidence on their activities during the last three decades.
The PERILS of UNINTENDED Government Sponsored COMMUNALISM.
In India, aid and "reserved jobs" are available to the poor belonging to certain "scheduled" or "historically disadvantaged" castes within a government sponsored affirmative action program. The motives are entirely altruistic, but the effects are catastrophic to the integrity of Indian society.
If you are poor but do not belong one of those "listed" castes, you are out of luck. This has led to much dissatisfaction, civil discord, even riots, immolations and killings in India.
This has also led to a "landrush" to become a disadvantaged class, with much elbowing and jockeying for position along the way. As an Indian Supreme Court judge once observed "there is no other country in the world where people compete so vigorously to degrade themselves in social status simply in order to gain government benefits."
There are reports of vast numbers of very poor high-caste Brahamins in New Delhi and other big Indian cities cleaning toilets, serving as porters, and pulling rickshaws. They are unable to qualify for government aid or reserved jobs ... because though poor, they are Brahamin; apparently, they are "clean" but not "untouchable"!
Now, the 162-million strong Muslims of India (13.4% of 1201 million) have woken up to the indisputable fact that in Hindu majority India they have lost ground, are economically disadvantaged, and are suffering from abject poverty. They are now demanding government aid for their poor as a religious group, a move vigorously resisted by those already on board the gravy train. More dissatisfaction and violence is in the offing in mother India.
All of this DEMONSTRATES the STUPENDOUS FOLLY of segmenting one's citizenry on communal bases for the allocation of national benefits: it SIMPLY PITS communities against one another.
So what is the solution, you may well ask? The SOLUTION is to allocate government benefits (money, land, jobs, whatever) on the basis of DEMONSTRABLE NEED ONLY, not on COMMUNAL BASES of race, religion, language, caste, or sex.
Even so, the wealthy are likely to oppose government handouts ... they would rather let the poverty stricken to be left to die, piously pronouncing that it arises from their karmic destiny.
But, there is a better way: provide aid, jobs, training and infrastructure to the needy and uplift them to self-sufficiency. Otherwise, the wealthy may not survive to keep their heads for long ... as was demonstrated on Bastille day on the 14th July, 1789 in Paris, France.
All of this should TEACH US SOMETHING about the FOLLY OF PANDERING to Racist Calls for special treatment of Tamils by the TNA. Allocation of Special Rights to certain people while denying them to others leads not to satisfaction and peace, but to PERMANENT dissatisfaction and discord.
Those who gain in the short term against their fellows, will lose their heads in the long term.
..............
India Eyes Muslims Left Behind by Quota System
By Jim Yardley
NewYporkTimes.com
March 09, 2012
MUZAFFARNAGAR, India — Along the narrow lane known as Khadar Wallah, Muslims and low-caste Hindus have lived side by side for years, bound by poverty, if not religion. Yet recently, Muslims like Murtaza Mansuri have noticed a change. Their neighbors have become better off.
Many of the Dalits, the low-caste Hindus once known as untouchables, have gotten government jobs, or slots in public universities, opportunities that have meant stable salaries and nicer homes. And to Mr. Mansuri the reason is clear: the affirmative action quotas for low-caste Hindus, a policy known in India as reservation, which is not explicitly available to Muslims.
India Eyes Muslims Left Behind by Quota System
.....continued 1.....
“We are way behind them,” Mr. Mansuri, who repairs rickshaws for a living, said on a recent afternoon. “Reservation is essential for Muslims. If we don’t get education, we will remain backward, while others move forward and forward.”
For decades, the issue of affirmative action for Muslims has been a politically fractious one in India. Many opponents, including right-wing Hindu groups, have long argued that affirmative action policies based on religion violate India’s Constitution and run counter to the country’s secular identity. Quotas, they said, should be strictly reserved for groups that have suffered centuries of caste-based discrimination.
But these arguments have been steadily countered by an undeniable and worrisome byproduct of India’s democratic development: Muslims, as a group, have fallen badly behind, in education, employment and economic status, partly because of persistent discrimination in a Hindu-majority nation. Muslims are more likely to live in villages without schools or medical facilities, a landmark government report found in 2006, and less likely to qualify for bank loans.
Now, the issue of Muslim quotas has bubbled to the surface in the recent election in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where the winner, the regional Samajwadi Party, has promised to carve out a quota of jobs and educational slots for Muslims, an idea first raised by the Indian National Congress Party. Legal and political obstacles remain, and some Muslims are skeptical that leaders will muster the political will to push through a quota, even as many consider such preferences justified and long overdue.
“We also fought against the British for Indian independence,” said Hafiz Aftab, president of the All-India Muttahida Mahaz, an organization that has led protests on behalf of Muslim preferences. “We lost so many of our brightest people. But after freedom, the government didn’t make any efforts to uplift Muslims.”
In Uttar Pradesh, the country’s poorest and most populous state, all of India’s caste and religious demarcations are on vivid display. It was here that one of India’s most searing acts of religious violence occurred in 1992, when an ancient mosque was destroyed by right-wing Hindu activists who claimed that it had been built on the site of the birthplace of Ram, the Hindu deity.
Indians in Uttar Pradesh have also witnessed the political rise of the Scheduled Castes, as the Dalits and other “backward” caste Hindus are legally called. Before losing the recent election, Mayawati, the state’s powerful Dalit chief minister (who uses one name), dominated Uttar Pradesh and used her position to reward many of her supporters with jobs, housing and other benefits. Dalits still remain overwhelmingly poor and marginalized in many parts of India, but Ms. Mayawati’s extensive use of the reservation quota system and other preferential policies in Uttar Pradesh provided opportunity to many Dalits.
“These Scheduled Castes were the most deprived people socially and economically in Uttar Pradesh,” said Mr. Aftab in an interview before the state elections. “Now they are the ruling class. This is the result of 64 years of reservation.”
India Eyes Muslims Left Behind by Quota System
......continued 2....
India’s original reservation policies were codified during the drafting of the national Constitution as quotas for Scheduled Castes and tribal groups. Over the years, other Hindu castes were added at both the state and national level, as different groups agitated for inclusion and politicians saw opportunities to carve out new vote banks. India’s modernization, rather than erasing caste, was codifying it.
“In India, the deepening of democracy will not happen by erasing all caste-community boundaries,” said Yogendra Yadav, a leading political scientist in New Delhi. “I see it as the next stage of social justice in India.”
Most Muslims in India are the descendants of low-caste Hindus who converted over the centuries, often to escape the deprived status to which Dalits were consigned. Yet those caste affiliations never fully disappeared, meaning that a hierarchy lingered among Muslims in India. Two government commissions sought to include “backward” Muslims in the quota system by using their former Hindu caste identity, along with educational and economic indicators.
My Comment at LankaWeb.com on "The drumbeats for war against Iran is a crime against world peace" by Ajit Randeniya
Ananda-USA Says:
March 11th, 2012 at 6:14 pm
The ludicrous nature of the current FRENZY against Iran is that it is being orchestrated by Western NUCLEAR POWERS, both declared (US, UK etc) and undeclared (Israel with 200+ warheads) of the world, against a nation that has never resorted to aggressive war against any other country in the last century!
Every sovereign nation is entitled to develop and utilize the benefits of nuclear energy, and if threatened by its enemies, nuclear weapons also. Iran … more than most countries … is OPENLY BEING THREATENED with bombing and even invasion by land, on a daily basis. Iran is ENTITLED TO DEFEND itself.
There is NOTHING in International Law that requires a country to remain defenceless against threats made against it. The right to arm itself against aggression is an inherent right of every country, to whatever extent it deems necessary. Relying on this principle, most Western Powers, China, India, Pakistan and most recently North Korea, have developed nuclear arsenals. One can only guess Pakistan’s fate if it were not a Nuclear Power.
What is ILLEGAL under International Law is the USE of Nuclear Weapons against other nations as the aggressor, implying FIRST USE of nuclear weapons in a conflict. Iran has not made use of ANY WEAPONS, Nuclear or non-Nuclear, in an offensive mode in the last century. Most recently, it defended itself against Iraq that launched an unprovoked sudden attack. Iraq, we recall, used Chemical Weapons provided by the US to Saddam Hussein in that war against Iran. Today, Israel is demanding 30-ton bunker busting boms from the US for attacking Iran’s nuclear installations.
Although ENTITLED by International Law it develop Nuclear Weapons in its own defense, Iran claims it is developing nuclear technologies only for energy production, and medical and other civilian uses of enriched isotopes. Whether we believe this claim or not, the fact is that Iran is ENTITLED to develop Nuclear Technologies for whatever use it pleases, including nuclear weapons, as long as it does not use those Nuclear Weapons in aggressive war. No nation state interested in survival will ever use Nuclear Weapons aggressively … that is a prescription for national suicide. This reality leads to the Principle of Nuclear Containment that has so far prevented nuclear war between the current nuclear powers. The same principle will work in the case of Iran, if it becomes a nuclear weapons power in the future.
My Comment at LankaWeb.com on "The drumbeats for war against Iran is a crime against world peace" by Ajit Randeniya
..... continued ......
Some say that “Iran is floating on oil” and therefore, it does not need ANY NUCLEAR ENERGY. They claim that that alone is clear proof that Iran is developing Nuclear Technologies for weapons purposes.
That is an unwarranted UNTRUTH, contrary to the facts underlying Iran’s future energy needs. Several years ago, the journal Technology Review of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published an article on Iran’s ability to meet its own internal demand for petroleum products. This article projected that given Iran’s rapidly increasing population (currently 77 million, growth rate 0.8% per year, leveling out at 100 million in 2050) and internal consumption, Iran would become a NET IMPORTER of oil and petroleum products within the next TWO DECADES.
If Iran’s leaders are the careful and intelligent people that I think they are, they would know this also, and prepare to meet the energy needs of their people long before their oil resources run out, and while they still have the oil revenues to pay for developing the alternative sources of energy. For meeting BASE LOAD needs of Iran, there is NO OTHER VIABLE ALTERNATIVE to nuclear energy. Therefore, Iran MUST OF NECESSITY develop nuclear technology. Given that the Western Powers give every indication of preventing the supply of Nuclear Fuels to Iran, and even Russia is forced into dragging its feet completing the Russian-built nuclear reactor, Iran MUST DEVELOP not only its own Nuclear Reactors but also produce its own Nuclear Fuels from indigenous ore deposits.
Given these self-evident TRUTHS, the current VENDETTA against Iran by Western Powers, demonizing and threatening war against a nation acting well within its sovereign and inalienable rights, that has never resorted to aggressive war against other countries in recent memory, is ABSOLUTELY WRONG, and is INDEED A CRIME of vast proportions.
GoSL reminds US of what its ‘own man’ in Colombo revealed
By Shamindra Ferdinando
Island.lk
March 11, 2012
Sri Lanka striving to defeat a US-led resolution at the current session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) strongly believes a statement attributed to former US Defence Attache, Lt. Col. Lawrence Smith at a seminar in Colombo can’t be ignored by those pursuing the government on the human rights front.
The unprecedented statement made towards the end of Lt. Col. Smith’s tenure in Colombo in response to a query raised by retired Indian Maj. Gen. Ashok Metha disputed the very basis of the assertion that the LTTE wanted to surrender to advancing troops, though the government ignored the move.
The US soldier intervened, though Maj. Gen. Metha, who had served as the IPKF commander in the Ampara-Batticaloa sector in 1987, directed the question to Maj. Gen. Shavendra Silva, now at the centre of a controversy over indiscriminate military action on the Vanni front.
Authoritative Defence and External Affairs officials told The Island that the US, too, couldn’t close the eyes to its own man’s statement if it was genuinely interested in knowing the truth. Sources said that all major Colombo based diplomatic missions probably had agreed with the US official’s assumption, though the US State Department distanced itself from the statement attributed to Lt. Col. Smith. The US being a Co-Chair for Sri Lanka’s peace process, knew what was going on in the wake of close quarter combat operations on the Vanni east front.
This is what Lt. Col. Lawrence Smith had to say.
"Hello, may I say something to a couple of questions raised. I’ve been the defence attaché here at the US Embassy since June 2008. Regarding the various versions of events that came out in the final hours and days of the conflict — from what I was privileged to hear and to see, the offers to surrender that I am aware of seemed to come from the mouthpieces of the LTTE — Nadesan, KP — people who weren’t and never had really demonstrated any control over the leadership or the combat power of the LTTE.
"So their offers were a bit suspect anyway, and they tended to vary in content hour by hour, day by day. I think we need to examine the credibility of those offers before we leap to conclusions that such offers were in fact real.
"And I think the same is true for the version of events. It’s not so uncommon in combat operations, in the fog of war, as we all get our reports second, third and fourth hand from various commanders at various levels that the stories don’t seem to all quite match up.
"But I can say that the version presented here so far in this is what I heard as I was here during that time. And I think I better leave it at that before I get into trouble. "
"In Washington, no sooner he made these remarks (which were published exclusively in The Island) the US State Department disassociated itself with Lt. Col. Smith’s remarks.
"The State Department’s Deputy Spokesman Mark C. Toner said that the defense attaché had attended the seminar as an observer and a note taker. "His comments reflected his personal opinions. There’s no change in the policy of the United States, and his remarks do not reflect any change in our policy."
The day may come when India caves-in to the demands of the Racists of Tamil Nadu, who will not eliminate caste discrimination in Tamil Nadu and uplift their people, but presume for racist reasons to demonize Sri Lanka which treats ALL of its people, Tamils included, far better than Tamil Nadu does.
The GOSL should not deviate from the path of REFUSING TO DEVOLVE POWER on communal bases to its provinces, and MUST NOT APOLOGIZE in nany shape or form for defending its people from Eelamist Tamil terrorists.
Our COLLECTIVE SURVIVAL as a nation and a people is at stake.
Therefore, Sri Lanka MUST PREPARE for the day when Sri Lanka will not have India's help, by reaching out to other powerful allies in the world.
We SHOULD NOT, CAN NOT, and MUST NOT let Indian block politics decide the FATE of our Motherland.
India is FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG in many of the methods they have deployed to govern their country. It is their right to make their own mistakes; but we should avoid those mistakes and PREVENT DISINTEGRATION of our Motherland following those flawed policies.
India's fate as a single nation is clouded and uncertain because of their flawed policies on empowering and perpetuating COMMUNAL DIVISIONS.
Sri Lanka should NOT FOLLOW in India's centrifugal footsteps.
.........
Uproar over Sri Lanka resolution adjourns both houses in Indian parliament
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 13, New Delhi: Both houses of the Indian parliament had to be adjourned Tuesday as the Indian parliamentarians roared against Sri Lanka over alleged human rights violations asking the center government to support a United Nations resolution presented by the United States.
The MPs have flashed newspapers carrying reports of the screening of Britain's Channel-4 video on Sri Lanka and demanded the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to take a stand against Sri Lanka, Indian media reported.
The Tamil Nadu parties, DMK and AIADMK and the Communist parties have submitted notices to suspend the Question Hour for the Budget debate to discuss the Sri Lankan issue.
Rajya Sabha Speaker Hamid Ansari has adjourned the house till 12 noon as the DMK and AIADMK leaders continued to be vociferous and refused to sit down until the PM makes statement on Sri Lanka issue.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee speaking on the issue in Lok Sabha has said that the Prime minister has written a letter to the DMK chief Karunanidhi and the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa saying that India does not support any specific resolution for a particular country.
"We will determine a time to discuss this after discussions with the human rights team," Pranab has said.
Tamil parties in the Indian State of Tamil Nadu are pressuring the center government to support the US-backed resolution presented to the 19th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Uproar over Sri Lanka resolution adjourns both houses in Indian parliament
......continued....
India, Sri Lanka's closest ally has so far remained silent on the issue publicly while trying to weather the pressure from the Tamil sympathizers.
"All parties in Tamil Nadu must come together. The Centre should support the US resolution in the UNHRC," DMK chief Karunanidhi has been quoted as saying in the Indian media.
The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa last week sent a letter to Singh urging him not to back Sri Lanka at the UNHRC.
Jayalalithaa took exception to India's stance against "country specific resolutions" and suggestion to take up discussions only under Universal Periodic Review as a routine matter at the UNHRC, said it means direct support to Sri Lanka which is "most unfortunate and untenable."
The US resolution calls for the Sri Lankan government to expeditiously implement the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) and address the accountability issue, which the US says has not been adequately addressed in the LLRC report.
The resolution also calls for Sri Lanka to submit an action plan on implementing the LLRC recommendations to the Council and seek Council's involvement in technical issues to carry out the plan.
Relief, renewal and growth in Sri Lanka; GDP soars after end of war unlocks dormant economy
By William Spain, MarketWatch
March 12, 2012
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (MarketWatch) — From the floor of the stock exchange to the former security checkpoints now plastered with advertising posters to the bustling energy of this South Asian capital’s streets, the signs of renewal are plain.
Sri Lanka’s economic recovery from its long and brutal civil war has been astonishingly fast, though perhaps not so swift as the sudden, blood-soaked final chapter of that 25-year-old conflict in early 2009.
Nor has it been so decisively concluded.
While GDP growth, estimated at north of 8% last year, is among the most robust in the world, and the stock market’s three-year return would make Warren Buffett’s eyes bug out, a rising debt load, widening trade imbalance and soaring fuel prices could endanger or even derail much of the recent progress.
Still, the once-feared Tamil Tigers, who at their peak ruled a third of the nation’s land area, are dead, dying or scattered. Massive sums are being plowed into new roads, bridges, port facilities and other infrastructure.
Tourism is booming, with arrivals up 31% last year. New construction is everywhere. Exports are up. Land long off-limits due to the war has been brought into agricultural production, keeping a check on some food prices. Inflation has largely been tamed.
And, even more than two years on, there is a palpable sense of relief and relaxation that the conflict is over.
‘A lot is happening here’
At a sawmill outside the city of Batticaloa on the east coast, the proprietor chats with visitors as his crew saw 200-year-old logs of satin wood into planks destined for the home of a Colombo gem merchant.
An ethnic Muslim caught in the crossfire between the majority Buddhist Sinhalese and the largely Hindu Tamils, he was driven from his home for more than a decade due to fighting between government forces and the insurgents.
He welcomes the reassertion of central control, he said, and, while he has the small businessman’s typical skepticism of government motives, he is enthusiastic about the improved roads and security situation, along with the opportunities they bring.
“A lot is happening here,” he said.
As international hoteliers flood in and foreign companies move to set up manufacturing ventures, still the easiest way for an outside investor to access the growth is probably via the local bourse.
It is also relatively painless. Foreign investors only need an account with a participant of the central depository system and, after some modest paperwork, can be up and running the same day, although the country’s securities and regulator has to approve any new foreign funds. The Department of Exchange Control only caps foreign holdings in plantation industries like tea and rubber.
From there, an investor can take the pick of listed firms in banking, tourism, food production, ceramics and everything in between. As a one-stop option, several blue-chip holding companies have their fingers in all of those pies — and a few more.
Between the end of the war and the middle of last year, the All Shares Index typically placed at or near the top of the world’s exchanges, with gains of 125% and 96% in 2009 and 2010, respectively. It slipped a bit in 2011, with profit taking cited along with worries over government debt, tight credit and trade deficits. It is down about 10% so far in 2012.
There is a modest 0.03% fee on trades, but any other upside can be taken right to the bank: Sri Lanka has no capital-gains tax.
Relief, renewal and growth in Sri Lanka; GDP soars after end of war unlocks dormant economy
.....continued 1....
John Keell’s Holdings, with interests in tourism, transportation, retail, real estate, tea plantations and other sectors, is the largest listed company on the CSE. The company’s profits were up by 46% through the first nine months of 2011, with revenues rising 28%.
About 45% of its float is held by foreign investors, including the Janus Overseas Fund /quotes/zigman/587316 JNOSX +2.59% , which bought a 12% stake about two years ago.
“I certainly can’t complain” about business levels, said Krishan Balendra, Keell’s head of corporate finance and strategy. “Generally, the government is pro-private-sector, and the private sector is the main engine of growth as it always has been. The biggest difference now is that we have got an environment of no war.”
Money on the ground
On the sun-drenched shores of Weligama Bay on the south coast, Nahil Wijayasuriya, a local business tycoon and chairman of East-West Properties, is watching his 200-room hotel rise from the sands. He has an agreement with Marriott /quotes/zigman/213258/quotes/nls/mar MAR +2.35% , which will brand and manage the property, located within easy reach of nearby Galle, and about 90 minutes from Colombo via a new Western-style expressway. It is also within striking distance from Hambantota, site of a new deepwater harbor and international airport that is, not coincidentally, the home political turf of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Wijayasuriya, who has or has had diverse interests around Asia including real estate and broadcasting, was holding a lot of his assets in cash.
But devaluation “threatened to turn it into toilet paper, so I decided to put some more money on the ground. And I have found that I can make more here now than I could in Singapore or the Philippines.”
Along with Marriott, other hospitality firms are eagerly eyeing Sri Lanka, which has seen annual visitor traffic double to roughly 900,000 over the last few years. Hong Kong–based Shangri-La last month broke ground on two new resorts. Starwood /quotes/zigman/410958/quotes/nls/hot HOT +5.23% and Hyatt /quotes/zigman/574156/quotes/nls/h H -1.28% have also given the market at least the once-over, according to local media reports and government sources. Related story: Civil war over, Sri Lanka tourism blossoms.
Forecast: Cloudy, with chance of monsoon
There are some thunderclouds on the horizon — and not just related to the seasonal monsoons that lash both sides of the island depending on the time of year.
The value of Sri Lanka’s exports grew by 22% to $10 billion last year, but imports more than double that. There has been a big drive to become more self-sufficient in food, but, with little traditional heavy industry or petroleum, every car part and every gallon of gas has to come from abroad — bought and paid for in hard currency.
The government also removed some subsidies on fuel, leading to sharp price rises that are rippling through the supply chain and causing considerable pain at the lower end of the economic spectrum.
Worse, Sri Lanka gets roughly 90% of its oil, on favorable terms, from Iran. Sri Lanka has already been denied a waiver of U.S. sanctions on trade with Iran but can’t easily replace that supply as the only refinery is geared toward the specific composition of Iranian crude.
Late last month, a report from Fitch Ratings said that the “sharp official reserve depletion in the second half of 2011 has increased risks on the sustainability of its balance of payments.”
The IMF lends a hand
The International Monetary Fund has been lending a hand to keep things from getting too far out of whack, with loans already delivered and more on the way.
Relief, renewal and growth in Sri Lanka; GDP soars after end of war unlocks dormant economy
.....continued 2....
Koshy Mathai, the IMF representative for Sri Lanka, said he is generally satisfied with what the government has recently done to make the exchange rate more flexible and to tighten monetary policy, along with making money-losing state fuel and power monopolies pay more of their own way.
Sri Lanka, he said, “is blessed in that if you look at the debt-to-GDP-growth ratio ... they should be able to bring the debt down quite nicely in the next few years.”
He believes the medium-term prospects for GDP growth will remain in the 8% to 10% range, he said, especially if the country integrates more with other fast-growing economies in the region.
“More needs to be done by the private sector,” Mathai urged. “Right now, there is hardly a corporate bond market to speak of, and getting long-term finance from the banks is very difficult.”
Spreading the wealth
Whether Sri Lanka can sustain what its boosters like to call the “Wonder of Asia” will in large part depend on continuing to ease barriers to investment while maintaining political stability.
Crucial to the latter is ensuring that the newfound prosperity is shared, at least to some degree, across the ethnic and economic divides.
At the moment, unemployment, at 4.9%, remains low, while the nation’s central bank says that there has been a sharp reduction in poverty rates, from the 25% range in the 1990s to below 9% in 2009-10.
There have been a few protests, some violent, at the rising cost of living, especially when it comes to fuel and electricity. But the government has been able to keep a lid on most dissent due to the general economic expansion.
Rajapaksa Inc.?
President Rajapaksa, billboard-sized pictures of whom seem to be at every crossroads, still enjoys a deep reservoir of goodwill for putting paid to the Tigers once and for all — a feat that none of his predecessors managed to get close to achieving.
One aspect of his governance that rankles some is what could be seen as perhaps an overreliance on family members to help him run the show. One brother is secretary of the Ministry of Defense, while another is the minister of economic development and a third is the speaker of the parliament. Other relations enjoy high posts in government-run enterprises, the diplomatic corps, provincial governments, etc.
President Rajapaksa’s office declined to grant an interview.
“The politicization of many institutions has undermined public confidence,” said one Western diplomat. And many of the appointees “lack the cosmopolitan experience or skills needed” to perform their duties.
Getting cleaner by the year
It’s impossible to know whether Sri Lanka is more or less corrupt under Rajapaksa’s government than previous ones. But Sri Lanka did move up a couple notches on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index last year, from 91st place to 86th place. That put it a bit behind Thailand and China but ahead of neighboring India, along with Vietnam, the Philippines, Pakistan and Russia. The U.S. checks in at No. 24.
The question isn't really how much corruption there may be but what form it takes and whether it drains the life out of what would otherwise be profitable pursuits for everyone involved.
“If it is predictable and consistent in its application, we can cope with it,” commented one local economist, perhaps paraphrasing the old American definition of an honest politician as one who stays bought.
William Spain is a MarketWatch staff writer in Chicago.
The GOSL should communicate NOTHING of how it plans to implement LLRC recommendation to the US, to the UN or ANY OTHER COUNTRY.
Sri Lanka's business should remain SOLELY Sri Lanka's ... not foreign busybodies.
The US would not tolerate such supervision by foreign countries, EVEN in the killing of 16 civilians IN AFGHANISTAN. Not even that presumably sovereign, but in actuality militarily occupied, country. The US soldier/soldiers who ran amok and murdered those civilians will be investigated by the US and let off with a slap on the wrist, and sent to a hospital for a while! Afghanistan will have no say in the matter.
Different Strokes for Different Folks! Hypocrites!
.....
US unable to authenticate video on Sri Lanka rebel leader's son
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 14, Washington, DC: The United States said Tuesday that it is not able to authenticate a video which the Britain's Channel 4 Television is claiming to be a new footage showing the execution of 12-year-old son of Sri Lanka's slain Tami Tiger terrorist leader Prabhakaran.
"With regard to the video that is circulating, that we obviously are not able to authenticate, with regard to the son of Prabhakaran," the State Department spokesperson Ms. Victoria Nuland said at the daily press briefing in response to a media query.
Reiterating that the US is deeply concerned about allegations of international human rights law and human rights violations in Sri Lanka, the spokesperson said the US supports a "full accounting of and accountability" for anyone who is engaged in violations of international human rights and humanitarian law and.
"That's why, with our partners, we are supporting a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that calls for action on important steps towards reconciliation and accountability while expressing the international community's concern about the delays in implementation," Ms. Nuland said.
She added that the US is encouraging the Government of Sri Lanka to communicate what it intends to do to implement the recommendations of the LLRC, which made its own recommendations way back in the fall.
The United States has sponsored a resolution at the 19th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva to pressure Sri Lankan government to expeditiously implement the recommendations made by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) and address the accountability issues.
The United States has said that its goal of submitting the resolution is to get other countries to join the US to encourage the Sri Lankan government to take measures needed to ensure "meaningful and lasting national reconciliation" after the end of the three-decade long conflict.
"This is something we've been asking the Government of Sri Lanka and its � through its Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission to address for some time. So it remains a serious concern," the State Department Spokesman Mark Toner said Monday.
Sri Lanka has launched a vigorous diplomatic offensive to defeat the resolution at the UNHRC saying that the government is committed to implement the LLRC recommendations and has already implemented several of those recommended by the Commission but it needs time and space to work towards reconciliation without interference from the international community.
The GOSL should not relax its diplomatic efforts for one moment until the votes are cast, and the issue WON in Sri Lanka's favor.
If Sri Lanka LOSES, let the GOSL ABANDON "Reconciliation" and the LLRC recommendations ENTIRELY and pursue a NEW POLICY of ETHNIC INTEGRATION as I have proposed at this Forum.
That is the ONLY PATH to an ENDURING PEACE in Sri Lanka.
ONE Nation, of ONE People, sharing ONE National Destiny, irrespective of communal differences should be our goal.
Dissolve all Provincial Governments, eliminate the 13th Amendment from the Constitution, adopt direct administration of Districts by the central government as largest units of civilian administration of the country.
DO NOT LET foreigners dictate FLAWED POLICIES designed to divide and rule Sri Lanka as a patchwork of ethnic Bantustans .... EVER AGAIN!
............
International community split over Sri Lanka's resolution at UNHRC - External Affairs Minister
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 14, Colombo: External Affairs Minister of Sri Lanka Prof. G.L. Peiris says the international community is split over the resolution on Sri Lanka at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) sessions in Geneva.
Speaking at the national conference on the Role of Education in Reconciliation, Peiris has said the 47 member states in the UNHRC were split and there was no consensus over the resolution.
He has observed that the polarization of the Council has made it lose the respect of the international community.
Minister Peiris has explained that nations were not free to act independently and had to act according to the wishes of the economically and politically stronger nations and therefore, issues could not be viewed objectively.
According to Peiris, the resolution tabled before the UNHRC on Sri Lanka has not helped the progress in implementing the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) recommendations.
Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva Ambassador Tamara Kunanayakam has said that the present climate at the UNHRC is in Sri Lanka's favor, but more work need to be done to garner support from member states to defeat the resolution.
Oh My God!
Criminal foxes are minding the government hen house in India!
And these are the people trying to preach human rights to Sri Lanka?
..............
India politics: New state MPs 'face criminal charges'
BBC.com
March 12, 2012
Uttar Pradesh assembly Uttar Pradesh has the largest number of "criminal" legislators
More than a third of candidates elected in the recent elections in five Indian states face criminal charges, according to a study by an independent watchdog.
The Association for Democratic Reforms said 35% of the legislators - 252 of the 690 - had cases pending.
The ruling Congress party fared poorly in state elections that have just been held in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa.
These polls are seen as a litmus test for national elections due by 2014.
North-eastern Manipur state is the only exception: not a single elected candidate there is facing criminal charges, the report says.
In addition, the number of candidates with criminal records in the other four states saw an 8% rise over the last state elections in 2007, the watchdog says.
The independent study was based on sworn statements filed by the candidates before they contested the polls.
Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state, provided the largest number of candidates with criminal charges against them, the analysis shows.
A total of 189 legislators - or 47% of the total - had criminal cases against them in the state, according to the affidavits filed by them, the report says.
In 2007, 140 - or 34% - of the legislators had criminal records.
Will offshore OIL be a national asset, or a national liability, for Sri Lanka as geopolitics begin to intervene in exploration for and production of that oil?
Sri Lanka should diversify its international partnerships in this area; reliance on India alone will be very risky for the survival of Sri Lanka as an independent nation.
.............
Sri Lanka's potential oil reserves spark global interest
By Charles Haviland
BBC.com
March 12, 2012
A beach in Mannar The Mannar Basin is believed to hold vast reserves of oil that many companies are keen tap into.
As hopes grow in Sri Lanka that viable reserves of oil are about to be discovered in its seawaters, commentators are speculating about the intentions of India, China and Russia in prospecting for it.
Recent Indian media reports suggested that India does not want countries other than itself and Sri Lanka to get involved in oil exploration in the Palk Strait between the two countries. But these have not been confirmed.
Meanwhile the Sri Lankan government says it is "confident" that traces of petroleum in its waters will have commercial value.
And it wants a variety of companies and countries to prospect for it.
'Quite confident'
Sri Lanka has never produced oil but after the end of its civil war it is reviving the quest for it.
Plans were boosted late last year when natural gas was discovered in two out of three wells sunk in its portion of the Mannar Basin - the sea area due west of the island.
They've a lot of experience. Their knowledge is more than ours - they have a lot of seismic knowledge. And they have the funding - if we're picking partners, they tick the boxes”
Saliya Wickramasuriya
Petroleum Resources Development Secretariat
The wells were sunk by Cairn Lanka, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the private company Cairn India in which Cairn UK has a minority holding.
Cairn has prospecting rights in one out of the 15 blocks being seriously considered for petroleum. Ten of these lie in the Mannar Basin and five in the Cauvery Basin further north.
It won the rights through an open bidding in 2007 and is now conducting further exploration while assessments are made of the viability of the gas deposits which also contain light oil reserves.
"We're quite confident that the Mannar Basin holds commercial reserves of petroleum," the director-general of Sri Lanka's Petroleum Resources Development Secretariat, Saliya Wickramasuriya, told the BBC.
"We now want to accelerate investment and development here based on the Cairn finds."
There is optimism because the Indian portion of the Cauvery Basin has yielded oil deposits for several decades. More than 30 wells operate there and a Canadian company has rights over 1,360 sq km.
'Diversity of investors'
A few years ago Colombo offered a block each to the Indian and Chinese governments free of charge, but they failed to take up the offer.
Things now seem to be different.
Sri Lanka's potential oil reserves spark global interest
.......continued.....
Mr Wickramasuriya says India's state-owned oil company, ONGC-Videsh, has visited Sri Lanka in recent weeks and wants to prospect in both the Mannar and Cauvery basins. It has made investment proposals which Colombo is still considering.
He denies the Indians have stipulated who else should be allowed to apply and says Sri Lanka is strongly interested in working with ONGC whose bid he describes as "logical" and, coming from a neighbouring country, attractive.
"They've a lot of experience. Their knowledge is more than ours - they have a lot of seismic knowledge. And they have the funding - if we're picking partners, they tick the boxes.
"But we'd like to see a diversity of investors."
He says several are interested - ranging from Russia's state-owned Gazprom and Vietnam's state-owned PVEP to the private French giant Total and smaller independents from Australia, the US and European countries.
He did not confirm any special interest from China but said Sri Lanka will "write to the whole world", including China, to attract bids.
Successful bidders will have to pay oil royalties and steep taxes to Sri Lanka in return for their licences.
China factor
Asantha Sirimanne, editor of Lanka Business Online, believes China is in general "very keen to get mineral rights" and may prefer to be assigned a block than to bid for one.
He says Gazprom officials have met the Sri Lankan authorities both here and in Russia within the past nine months and believes that as close international allies of Sri Lanka both China and Russia will have "lots of leverage" if they are seriously seeking exploration rights.
A worker examines the valve of a pump on an ONGC well India's ONGC-Videsh, one of the companies being linked to exploration in the Mannar Basin.
China is extending huge loans to Sri Lanka for post-war infrastructure development, with Chinese workers doing much of the construction on seaports, a new airport, highway and railway extension projects and power stations.
Colombo is fulsome in its praise for Beijing, which it now says is its largest development partner. Last week as its defence secretary visited Beijing, Sri Lanka said bilateral relations were at an "unprecedented" high.
Indian-financed projects in Sri Lanka have been slower to get off the ground and Mr Sirimanne believes India may be concerned at any Chinese interest in the oil rush, China being its great regional rival and Sri Lanka being right on India's doorstep.
One extra factor is that another block seen as having hydrocarbon potential has been earmarked off southern Sri Lanka, close to the massive Chinese-funded Hambantota port.
Mr Wickramasuriya admitted that in Indian eyes the Mannar Basin is essentially shared between India and Sri Lanka and said any prospecting in the area by other countries would be closely monitored to ensure that it did not extend beyond oil exploration.
The authorities say they hope the Mannar and Cauvery blocks will all be allocated by nomination or by open bidding in two phases this year and next.
As a reassurance to the Indian oil giant, he said it was quite possible that exploration rights in some blocks might be awarded to ONGC-Videsh on a nomination basis.
DEVOLUTION OF POLICE POWERS : A RESPONSE TO MR. SUMANTHIRAN, MP
By Gamini Gunawardane
Rtd. Snr.DIG
Island.lk
March 13, 2012
This response is in reference to the article by Mr. M.A. Sumanthiran MP published in The Island of 10th February. It is indeed a good thing that this vexed issue is opened for discussion in the public domain. We must be thankful to him for expressing his views as it enables public scrutiny of these ideas.
It is unfortunate that Mr. Sumanthiran (MAS) and his ilk see the so called national problem only form their point of view. Naturally what they see is a distorted picture. Hence needless to say what kind of solutions they would develop. India sees the problem from their point of view, namely, how to please Tamil Nadu State Government in order to solve their own instability in Indian parliament.
In this regard, it appears that the TNA seem to think that they are the only minority in this country. What about the Muslims and Malays? In fact even the Sinhalese are suffering from a minority complex pitted against the constant beating of war drums by the Tamil Nadu Government next door backed by 60 millions Tamils. Their fears appear to be quite real judging by some recent events, viz., The Tamil Nadu fishermen are brazenly encroaching into Sri Lankan territorial waters to rob our Northern fisherman of their catch. Tamil Nadu government is constantly objecting to efforts by Sri Lanka Navy to defend their country’s territorial waters! What would TN do if the shoe was in the other foot? (Incidentally, the solution offered by the respected celebrity Mr. Abdul Kalam was, to allow the South Indian fishermen to fish in Sri Lankan waters every other day! What a brilliant solution!! And that too, after enjoying our respectful hospitality for four days here!) Now they say they want to take back Kachchativu. But not a whimper from the TNA. I wondered whether on their recent trip to the US to meet their friends, Robert O’ Blake, Ms. Clinton et al they pleaded with them to request India not to allow their fishermen to rob Sri Lankan fishermen of their fishing grounds. Apparently that is not their priority. One begins to wonder, whose interests are they representing? Of what country are they?
We police officers on the other hand, are able to look at the Provincial Councils issue from the total country perspective, as senior officers who have worked in the Northern, Eastern, Southern, Central Provinces and at the Center. Hence, our problem is not merely giving police powers only to the North and the East, but to all Provincial Councils in the whole country. I shudder at the thought. I have written copiously in this newspaper several times on different occasions, explaining why it is dangerous to give police powers to any Provincial Council. Hence it is spurious to cover that ground all over again but shall re-visit them only pertaining to the issues raised by Mr. S.
DEVOLUTION OF POLICE POWERS : A RESPONSE TO MR. SUMANTHIRAN, MP
........continued 1...........
13th Amendment
It was only two weeks before, in reply to ICS (Midweek Review 8th Feb.) that I mentioned that it is time that we had a fresh look at today’s relevance of the 13th Amendment as a whole, and at Provincial Councils in particular. On its irrelevance, I can only quote what I wrote last week. "The very concept of Provincial Councils was developed by India, probably superficially modelled on the way India was administratively divided on a state basis. They little realized that Sri Lanka was so much smaller than the smallest Indian state in size and population. Some 25,000 sq. miles and 20 million people. Besides, the division of Sri Lanka into 9 provinces was done by the British in 1833, in order to facilitate their own administrative system and revenue collection. Also the meagre road transport and poor communication facilities at that time would have influenced their decision. Today, with dramatic improvements in road, railway & air transport systems and tele-communications with the information revolution, the need for a provincial administration has to be re-looked at. We need to re-look at this question whether, for an effective administrative system a proper de-centralization with enhanced e governance, would not meet the expectation of the people instead of a proven ineffective and expensive Provincial system which nobody wants."
Provincial Councils
MAS argues that the Police powers should be given to the Provincial Councils because it is so stated in the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. But this particular Amendment is a peculiar oddity. Merely because this peculiar piece of legislation is in the Constitution whether it is obligatory on the part of the Government that it should be implemented has become a moot point. I do not know whether any other country in the world is confronted with this predicament. This is no disrespect to our constitution. I am only referring to the abuse and humiliation it has been subjected to. I repeat the details in my previous article: "A constitution is believed to be the formal statement of country on what it wants to be and how it wants to be governed. It is best arrived at by consensus. It cannot be prescribed by any other source. This particular amendment on the contrary was introduced by force by a foreigner much against the wishes of all its people." "This was a child (Provincial Councils) that was not wanted by both the ‘mother’ (JRJ) and the father(?) (Prabhakaran). The day she was born, there were riots in the country followed by a virtual rebellion. A naval rating on the honour guard offered to Rajiv Gandhi who was her God Father, assaulted him with a rifle butt, to kill him. The 13th Amendment was rejected outright by Prabhakaran himself despite the fact that it was drafted to appease him, in order to entice him to drop his arms with a view to draw him into the main stream. The Amendment together with its provision to amalgamate the Northern and Eastern Provinces immediately by Emergency Regulation, together with Police and Land powers, was virtually offering elam on a platter. JRJ though coerced to agree to this amendment expressed in so many ways his dislike towards it. He did everything he could, to subvert it covertly. The government MPs who voted for it were made to live the previous night in a hotel to be herded in a bus to the Parliament probably to make sure that they did not desert or changed their mind. The Supreme Court that decided the amendment was in order, did so on a split decision. Thus, this ‘unwanted baby’ reminds one of the old Baila line: Oluwa lokui, bada mahathai, kehethage apalay! I forgot to mention that a Cabinet Minister resigned in protest.
DEVOLUTION OF POLICE POWERS : A RESPONSE TO MR. SUMANTHIRAN, MP
........continued 2...........
Furthermore, "Neither this amendment nor the Provincial Councils were asked by any one in this country, whether Tamil, Muslim, Sinhalese or any other, as a solution to our problems. It was forced on this country by the then Indian Prime Minister, after the infamous ‘Parippu Invasion’ which again was a despicable intrusion into this independent country. I do not know whether there is any other instance in world history where such a dastardly act of aggression was committed on a sovereign nation. The funny thing is that the whole world with all their Human Rights guns cocked, looked on while all this happened. Could any nation with an iota of self respect afford to continue with such an anomaly, even after she had defeated the very circumstance that it sought to address? "The 13th Amendment thus remains a constitutional aberration, an embarrassment. Hence it is no surprise that the system rejects it." Could any nation with self-respect continue to have such an embarrassing aberration in its constitution? It is indeed a pity that a government which was bold enough to brush aside powerful interventions, to wipe out the Terrorist menace from this country, is not courageous enough to retrieve the lost honour of this independent nation by passing legislation to remove this indignity, this singular slur on its sense of honour, by eliminating this obnoxious piece of legislation, despite being armed with a 2/3 majority.
One wonders what right the government of India has, to persist with the implementation of the 13th Amendment, when she as a party to the Indo-Lanka Accord had not honoured their part of the obligation, on their failure to disarm Prabhakaran? Sri Lanka government had duly discharged their part of the obligation passing in Parliament albeit under teeth of opposition the 13th Amendment and joining the Northern and Eastern Provinces by Emergency Regulations followed by passing in Parliament a Provincial Councils Act. In these circumstances, one has to ask the question whether as a self respecting sovereign nation, people of this country have no inherent right to reject what it does not want implemented.
DEVOLUTION OF POLICE POWERS : A RESPONSE TO MR. SUMANTHIRAN, MP
........continued 3...........
Now coming to the question of why Police powers should not be given to the Provincial councils, I mention two bitter experiences that India herself suffered in recent times owing to his policy. When the well known Mumbai Terrorist attack happened, it took well over 12 hours for the Indian Central Government to move its elite Commandos to the scene owing to the delay in obtaining clearance from the Maharashtra State Government. There was another incident where Sonia Gandhi, president of the ruling Congress Party, was denied permission to enter some other State accompanied by her personal security. Would any one in this country too want to be in a similar plight? On the other hand, under the central government system I as mere SSP Galle Division, was able to get down the Colombo Municipality Fire Engines to Galle within a matter of hours, to put out the burning fires during the Inhale-Muslim clashes in 1978. The Police Central Vice Squad of Pandora has the authority to strike in any part of the country without informing any local authority. Mind you, that includes Northern & Eastern provinces as well. (I hope then it will not be alleged that the central government has found a device to harass the poor Tamils in these areas!) If on the other hand, the President wanted to hold the next Independence Day parade or the "Debate Karla" in Kilinochchi or Jaffna, the chief Minister could say "No. Not here." The president then will have to eat the humble pie in his own country, like Sonia Gandhi. It will be indeed pathetic situation to be in, after winning back at great cost, human & other, by military might, the government mandate over the entire country, following a prolonged struggle. Such a situation is aptly summarized in the popular Sinhala saying: Wattha baddata deela, eassata datha niyawanawa!
We recently had the experience where Dr. Babapulle the UNP candidate for Anuradhapura was done to death and his house burnt down while the local police is alleged to have looked the other way, and everyone in the police knows due to whose influence it was. That happened while the Police was still under the Central Government. A latter day DIG complained to me that his chief minister interfered even when he changed a sergeant in his office! And that too while he Police was still under the Central government! This is only a sample of operational & law and order problems that ‘devolution’ will give rise to. I may have to write a separate long article to describe the other aspects. Then there are the Command & Control and accountability issues which are too numerous to mention here. Suffice it to say, once during the early days of the Provincial Councils, the DIG of the Southern Province who became a drinking partner of the Chief Minister, left to Australia having obtained overseas’ leave from him, never to return!
In regard to command and control, if the subject of policing is brought under the Chief Minister with the DIG reporting to him, the command structure of the unitary police organization will be completely disrupted. What would happen to the Territorial (policing) Command of the IGP? If the Inspector General of Police is not responsible for crime control in the country which is the prime role of the police, what will he be IG for? Will he then be the mere Logistics manger for the Police? Then how will the Central Government be responsible for the Law and Order of the whole country which is one of its primary responsibilities? What is the accountability process?
DEVOLUTION OF POLICE POWERS : A RESPONSE TO MR. SUMANTHIRAN, MP
........continued 4...........
Devolution of Corruption
We all know that our Ministers in the central government are corrupt. Last Sunday Island reported that a Cabinet Minister’s daughter had placed a bid for Rs. 900 million to purchase a Children and Women’s Hospital on Kirimandala Mawatha – a key asset of the collapsed Golden Key Company. Another Minister, it was reported, was stopped while building a five story house on Park Road on somebody else’s land! Now we read that the Supdt. of Excise of Batticaloa had complained to Supreme Court that the Chief Minister of Eastern Province charges Rs. 20 for each bottle of arrack sold in the province and when he tried to stop it the CM had threatened to kill him and he had transferred him to Trincomalee. What guarantee is there that a future Chief Minister of the Northern Provincial Council or elsewhere will not emulate him? We cannot get away with the argument that he is a different case for different reasons. Fact remains that this is possible. These are our future politicians at the provincial & Pradesheeya level, judging by the Kelaniya PS episode. That the central government is corrupt is bad enough. The question now is, do we want another level of corrupt politicians at levels closer to the people, to increase their suffering & exploitation? It is a ‘devolution ‘of corruption that we will get.
There is a real danger here. If the Chief Minister and his DIG hit it off as happened at Southern Province, what will be the plight of the police officers and the people in the province? If this was the situation in the Eastern Province will the Chief Minister stop at only threatening to kill the Excise Supdt.?
MAS states: "The provincial executive also must have the necessary independence from central control to give effect to and implement regional laws and regulations. It is essential therefore that a substantial measure of powers over police be vested in the province so as to implement regional laws."
Police Ordinance empowers a police officer to exercise his police powers in any part of the Country. In this capacity he enforces many ordinances in addition to the Police Ordinance, Penal Code & the Code of Criminal Procedure, such as the Excise Ordinance, Forest Ordinance and many other municipal laws in different parts of the country. It did not require them to be brought under the Excise Commissioner, Conservator of Forests or the mayors or chairman of the Local Government Authorities for proper enforcement of those laws over the last 150 years, under a centralized government structure. Police have also served different Communities spread throughout the country. So what is the need for them to be under the Provincial Councils to enforce their laws? Our real fear is whether a localized police under the thumb of the Chief Minister will be able to enforce the law with out fear or favour in the present extreme politicized climate. As it is, it is bad enough that the central police is highly politicized and corrupt. It is at least distant form the periphery. How much worse would it be when it is taken to the micro level? It will encroach on the lives of the people at intimate levels. The plight of the provincial policemen & the people will be worse.
He further says: "Just as we would never approve of a politician from Mannar controlling the functioning of the police in Matara, there is no reason why politicians from Colombo must have exclusive powers over the police in Muttur."
DEVOLUTION OF POLICE POWERS : A RESPONSE TO MR. SUMANTHIRAN, MP
........continued 5...........
MAS has hit the nail on the head here. This is the central problem that all politicians suffer from: that politicians (local or other) should have control over the police. All problems of law enforcement and Rule of Law flows from this misconception. Mother of all problems in this country! What we are agitating for is that no politician have any control over any police officer at Mannar, Matara or Muttur or anywhere else. What we want is an Independent Police with accountability as recommended by the LLRC. The remedy to MAS’s problem is, de-politicization of the police and not further politicization even at the grassroots level. How much more pleasant & safe the life in this country will be for all communities if there was an independent & impartial police? There would be no need for a provincial police. Hence what the TNA should fight for is de-politicization of the Sri Lanka Police in the whole country instead of further politicization of the police in the North & the East. For, there are more Tamils living outside these two provinces. Unlike the parochial concerns of the TNA our concern is the interests of the whole country. So our invitation to TNA is to leave the periphery and come into main stream politics to help this entire country to have a better life for all communities. The problems the TNA is talking about is not peculiar to the Tamils of North & East. The same problems exist in other parts of the country. There are the war widows, also destitute children in the LTTE ravaged boarder villages, broken families of soldiers & other victims of bombs etc. etc in the South too. There are also the Sinhalese & Muslims IDPs from the North & the East owing to ethnic cleansing by the LTTE. Hence our invitation to the TNA is to adopt a holistic view rather than a narrow communal approach to the problems of this country. That is why I said at the beginning of this essay that the problem with TNA is that they look at this problem only from their point of view. Hence they keep getting wrong answers.
MAS further states "Tensions between the police force and local communities result in an atmosphere of fear and resentment. This tense atmosphere sometimes lead to outbreaks of violence and sometimes acts of brutality" This is so in all communities from Birmingham to Manchester to Los Angeles and elsewhere in the world as much as in Sri Lnaka since the Sinhala- Muslim riots of 1915 todate. The latest was when the people of Dompe turned on Dompe police. These are common problems between police & communities who are all human beings, all over the world. Is politicized provincial police the answer to such problems? Did the Muslims ask for a police for themselves to do justice for them?
He cites the ‘Grease Devil’ phenomena as the latest issue to justify such a demand. Now it is common knowledge among all police officers in this country that from time to time there emerge in villages, antics of some sex pervert who collect ladies underwear or engage in voyeurism or even engage in petty thieving in villages with grease on their bodies. They are either caught or just disappear after sometime. There is no big fuss. This time it was blown out of proportion by Tamil press specially and read political & other meanings more for propaganda effect. Now where is the ‘Grease Yakka’? Is it a permanent feature? Are these good enough reasons to dismantle a strongly built time tested centralized police structure?
DEVOLUTION OF POLICE POWERS : A RESPONSE TO MR. SUMANTHIRAN, MP
........continued 6...........
MAS goes on to say: "This ruptured relationships between the police and local communities also impedes the efficient functioning of the police force. Effective policing requires public co-operation. The objectives of battling crime and creating peaceful society can never be possible without strong, effective bonds of trust between the police & the local communities" As against this assertion I have been listening to some police rankers who visit me, relate with nostalgia some great public relations success they have had in the North & the East, under the heat of fighting. Their advantage was that they were conversant in Tamil. Some of those people are still in contact with them. They were famous among the Tamil people for their fair play & humanism. It was only a few weeks ago that retired SSP Tassie Seneviratne wrote in an article after a tour in the North, about the great community relations work being carried out by the police their in the North, under the enlightened leadership of Snr. DIG Gamini Silva, DIG Daluwatte and the SSPs. Dr. Kingsley Wickramasuriya Rtd. Snr. DIG has published a book describing the success he had in the in Jaffna with his community- relations cum crime control work there. Some of the Jaffna people who befriended him still visit him when they come to Colombo. My own experiences in the Nuwara Eliya district and with the Muslims in Galle are too long to describe here. The STF in the Eastern Province is another success story. All this was achieved under the centralized system and despite the politicians who always like to have people divided! In a way this success was probably possible because there was no Chief Minister breathing down our necks. Similarly there were Tamil officers who had built excellent community relations. R Sunderalingam Snr. DIG was prominent among them organizing bicycle races. ‘Sunda’ was a household name then. So were Late M. Shanmugan SSP, S. Vamadevan DIG, Late Rura Rajasingham IG, Late P. ( Brute) Mahndran DIG and S. Sivendran SSP, the list is long. Colourful characters all. They were so popular both among the rank & file and the people that no one paused to think they were Tamil or Sinhalese until this communal bug was introduced. Some of my best officers including Bastianpillai and his trio who died were Tamils who were more Police officers than Tamil.
Moving Beyond Colonial Paradigm
MAS says: "Third, the idea that hyper-centralized control of the police is necessary to protect security in the country is in fact an outdated feature of colonial rule"
DEVOLUTION OF POLICE POWERS : A RESPONSE TO MR. SUMANTHIRAN, MP
........continued 7...........
How far it is correct to describe Sri Lanka Police as "hyper-centralized" is again a moot point. In my understanding Police Department is highly de-centralized, to the extent that as DIG Central Range & later in Southern Range I enjoyed complete freedom to carry on my administration. I was able to keep the politicians at bay thanks to the commitment the Inspectors General who stood by me against formidable pressure. The colonial police paradigm has many merits more than demerits, to govern a unitary country. We do not throw away everything colonial merely because it is colonial – a case of throwing the baby with the bath. The very concept of modern policing itself is British. What undermined it is the creeping of politicians into its running.
A paradigm shift is certainly necessary, not from the colonial model which is very sound, having stood the test of time despite chronic politicization. What is necessary is a paradigm shift from the Enforcement model to Community Oriented Policing model. The biggest obstacle to this is the loss of credibility of the police owing to politicization. So the answer is, not more politicization but de-politicization and providing the required space for the police to move into a Community Oriented model which will be fair and of benefit not only the Tamils of the North & East but to all communities all over the country. Here lies the answer to the problem that MAS is talking about. Hence my invitation to him and his TNA colleagues is to join the mainstream in an effort to de-politicize the police and to secure an Independent police who can be held accountable for their actions.
gunawardanegamini@gmail.com
Let all Patriots of Sri Lanka REMEMBER these enemies of the Motherland: US, UK & Norway.
They are PENALIZING Sri Lanka for rescuing its people from terrorism, while then as now they coddled the terrorists funding the terror.
When their own nations are threatened by terrorists ... they wipe them out without hesitation, yet they DENY Sri Lanka its inalienable sovereign right to defend itself!
Bloody HYPOCRITES preaching Double Standards!
..............
Massive demonstration organized in Sri Lanka against foreign intervention
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 14, Colombo: A patriotic organization called National Organization for Protecting the Country has organized a massive demonstration tomorrow (15) in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo to show solidarity against foreign forces attempting to create mayhem in Sri Lanka.
According to the organizers a huge peaceful foot procession will start on Thursday at 9:00 a.m. from Independence Square and proceed via Baudhaloka Mawatha, Thummulla, Bambalapitiya up to Kollupitiya.
The marchers will hand over a memorandum to Embassies and High Commissions of the US, Britain, Switzerland, Germany, and Norway in Sri Lanka.
All the ethnic groups comprising Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslims and the religious leaders of Buddhist, Hindu, Catholic and Islam, State and Private Sectors, Trade Unions and Volunteer Organizations will participate in the procession, the organizers say.
Sri Lanka has vehemently objected to a resolution submitted by the US to the UN Human Rights Council calling the resolution as an impediment to the reconciliation in the country.
The US-UK POT is calling the Sri Lankan KETTLE black!
As I said, BLOODY HYPOCRITES plying Double Standards at the PUPPET United Nations!
WE WILL NEVER FORGET!
..............
GoSL points finger at UK complicity in civilian killings
By Shamindra Ferdinando
Island.lk
March 13, 2012
The Sri Lankan government yesterday challenged those wanting the UN to intervene in Sri Lanka in the wake of unsubstantiated war crime allegations to discuss the deteriorating situation in many other parts of the world, due to excesses on the part of Western powers. Unfortunately, those human rights champions were mum on indiscriminate violence directed at civilians, an authoritative GoSL official said.
Referring to the recent killing of 16 Afghan civilians, including children, by a US serviceman, the official said that those who routinely preach to us about accountability and the importance of impartiality, would never accept an independent inquiry. Would the latest killing spree prompt the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to take up the issue with the US, which is a member of the 47-member rights body, the official said.
The latest massacre took place amidst ongoing protests in Afghanistan and Pakistan over U.S. troops burning Qurans last month and a video of Marines urinating on Taliban corpses was posted on the Internet in January.
The government was in the process of compiling atrocities committed by Western powers since 9/11 to highlight the failure on the part of the Office of the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, Ms. Navi Pilly or her predecessor to take up these issues, he said. The official pointed out that the UNHRC should actively consider creating the post of Special Rapporteur to study situations in countries, where Western forces had intervened and make recommendations to improve the situation. In spite of the deteriorating situation, the UN rights body had failed to take up contentious issues with Western powers, except raising concern over Guantanamo Bay.
The official said that the recent moving of the High Court in London against UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague for his complicity in US drone attacks causing loss of civilian lives in Pakistan was evidence of ongoing violations. The official said that the court action should be viewed in the backdrop of the UK Foreign Office Minister responsible for the human rights portfolio, Jeremy Browne, MP, stressing the responsibility on the part of the global community to intervene in Sri Lanka unless the government addressed accountability issues. In his address on the opening day of the current UNHRC sessions, parliamentarian Browne called for UN intervention to support change in Sri Lanka.
Browne said: "We, as UN member states, must take seriously our human rights obligations and, where states fail, the institutions of the UN should act and support change. Such actions are what make the council an effective human rights body, able to scrutinize states’ compliance with their obligations and offer technical assistance."
GoSL points finger at UK complicity in civilian killings
.......continued.....
The official said that on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations directed at Sri Lanka’s deputy permanent representative, Major General Shavendra Silva, Chairperson of the special UN panel on peace keeping operations, Louise Frechette had opposed the Sri Lankan’s participation at the deliberations of the council. Ambassador Silva represents the Asian group of countries.
Ms. Frechette is a top Canadian diplomat. The official said that "those lecturing us on human rights are continuing killings as the UNHRC meets in Geneva.". None of those supporting US-led resolution in Geneva had condemned the continuing bloodshed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, he said.
According to international media, the UK Foreign Secretary is in Washington with Premier David Cameroon.
The GoSL pointed out that INGO (Reprieve) had accused the UK of complicity in secret transfer of prisoners to Guantanamo Bay, where some are held without being charged for years. British intelligence is also alleged to have been involved in torture of terror suspects seized in clandestine operations in various parts of the world since 9/11.
Pakistan’s top envoy in Geneva recently exposed US double-standards at a meeting called by Sri Lanka to brief members of the UNHRC, regarding ongoing efforts to move a resolution targeting President Rajapaksa’s administration.
Let SL reduce the DIPLOMATIC presence and TERMINATE all cultural and "democracy building" activities of all countries that sponsored the UNHCR initiative against Sri Lanka.
Let SL CLOSE the Embassy of NORWAY, that has UNDERMINED Sri Lanka and aided terrorism in Sri Lanka for DECADES!
If India VOTES against Sri Lanka, let us stop accepting Indian Aid for Rehabilitation and Reconstruction for the North & East, and reduce Indian diplomatic presence in SL to ONLY the Indian Embassy in Colombo.
Let us also RETALIATE AGAINST the harrasment of Sinhala citizens in Tamil Nadu with a PROHIBITION against visits by Indian Tamils to Sri Lanka. Let us not engage in business activities with Tamil Nadu based businesses.
ENEMIES should be TREATED as ENEMIES!
.................
Jayalalithaa's MPs tear up Foreign Minister's statement on Sri Lanka resolution
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 14 (NDTV) New Delhi- Parties from Tamil Nadu demanded again today that the government commit to voting against Sri Lanka for its alleged war crimes at a United National Human Rights Council session in Geneva. The DMK, which is a senior partner in the coalition at the centre, has again reiterated that it could pull out of the government if its demand is ignored.
"I alone can't decide whether we will withdraw support... our executive will meet and decide. The DMK will deem it as a betrayal of Tamils if the centre does not support the resolution on Sri Lanka," said the DMK president, M Karunanidhi.
To underline this, the DMK yesterday moved amendments to President Pratibha Patil's address to Parliament earlier this week. The DMK wants it changed to reflect India's stand on Sri Lanka and its alleged war crimes. The gesture of asking for an amendment seriously undermines the government because it suggests a key partner in the ruling coalition differs with its agenda and policy.
Members of Parliament from the ruling AIADMK in Tamil Nadu walked out of the Rajya Sabha this morning after tearing up the statement made by Foreign Affairs Minister SM Krishna on the issue. Mr Krishna said India would "need to examine whether our actions will actually assist in the process of reconciliation in Sri Lanka, and enhance the current dialogue between the Government of Sri Lanka and Tamil parties."
Buddhist monks march in Sri Lanka against UN resolution
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 14, Colombo: Thousands of Buddhist monks marched in the Sri Lankan capital city of Colombo Wednesday to urge the United States and other Western nations not to act maliciously against the country.
Over 2,500 monks receiving Pirivena education in the Western Province marched from the Hunupitiya Gangarama Viharaya to the US Embassy in Colombo to hand over a memorandum asking the US to withdraw the resolution against Sri Lanka presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
In the memorandum, the monks have called on the United States not to talkie initiatives against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC sessions and asked the international community not to destroy the peaceful environment that has been built in the country following the defeat of terrorism.
Chancellor of the Kelaniya University Ven. Welamitiyawe Kusuladhamma Thera, Ven. Dr. Nagoda Amarawansa Thera and the Chief Incumbent of the Gangarama Temple the Ven. Galaboda Gnanissara Thera handed over the memorandum to the US Embassy.
The UNHRC is expected to vote on the resolutrion next week.
This amount of sense shown by India is lacking in the "human-rights" protecting "democracies" of the US-UK alliance.
The latter are SHAMELESS HYPOCRITES who bomb, kill, and torture people, and overturn legitimate governments in the developing world pursuing their Neo-Colonialist agendas without blinking their eyes!
BLOODY HYPOCRITES!
.............
Lanka issue: Soft line tied to J and K, Manipur
Prince Jebakumar
ExpressBuzz.com
March 14, 2012
CHENNAI: If India failed to support the US-backed resolution on war crimes against Sri Lanka at the United Nations Human Rights Council, it would be due to the fear of allegations of rights abuse in Jammu and Kashmir and Manipur being raised in the international forum by the block of countries supporting Sri Lanka, according to a highly placed source in the Union Government.
India feared that Lanka, or even Pakistan, which had its interest in J&K, could raise the issues if it supported the resolution, the PMO source told Express over phone.
“For instance, what would happen is that the issues of J&K and Manipur would be dragged in if we fail to support Lanka during such a crisis. We can’t also ignore the participation of China in the Island nation,” he said. Pressure has been building on the Centre over its stand on the issue. While major political parties in Tamil Nadu, including the AIADMK and the DMK, have been at its neck, other parties and civil society in TN have been building consensus on the issue. Soon after news about the UK-based Channel 4’s video on rights abuses during the Lankan civil war went viral, the two Dravidian parties had - a rare occasion considering their rivalry - jointly stalled proceedings in Parliament on Tuesday demanding India’s support to the resolution.
Why the US resolution must be defeated -Island Editorial
Island.lk
March 14, 2012
The US is determined to go ahead with its resolution on Sri Lanka at the UNHRC and all signs are that a showdown is inevitable. What is unfolding in Geneva is a diplomatic badger hunt with the mastiffs of neo-imperialism on the rampage. Smarting from an ignominious defeat at the UNICEF in Paris last year at the hands of Palestine, the Obama administration cannot afford to lose in Geneva against a small nation. It will, therefore, go the whole hog to secure the passage of its resolution, come what may. Sri Lanka is equally determined to defeat the resolution which is a Trojan horse.
On the face of it, the US resolution may look harmless. But, looks are deceptive! The 2002 Ceasefire Agreement, too, had an innocent look about it. But, it not only paved the way for the internationalisation of Sri Lanka's internal problem but also enabled the LTTE to gain international legitimacy and establish a de facto separate state. It also helped the US, the EU and Norway have a strong presence in this region on the pretext of resolving Sri Lanka's conflict.
Those longing to get rid of the incumbent Rajapaksa regime are apparently deriving some perverse pleasure from its predicament in Geneva. If they think the US resolution is against the government and not the country, they are mistaken. Should the US and its allies succeed in their endeavour, the ultimate winner would be the LTTE, which is now trying to achieve its goal diplomatically.
One's opposition to the US resolution should not be confused with one's antipathy towards the US or the West or one's love for the Rajapaksa regime. Deputy UNP leader Sajith Premadasa is no Rajapaksa fan, as is well known, but he has rightly condemned the US move. He deserves praise!
That the US is not genuinely interested in protecting human rights is patently clear from its human rights track record. Having torpedoed a UN report (better known as the Goldstone Report) on alleged war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians, it is backing the rulers of Bahrain, who are violently suppressing democratic dissent. In 1986, when Saddam Hussein was in its good books, the US voted against a UN Security Council move to condemn Iraq for chemical attacks on Iranian troops--a savage war crime.
As for the US war crimes, nothing is more revealing than what US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said on May 12, 1996 in answer to a CBS television query on civilian deaths in Iraq:
Lesley Stahl of CBS: We have heard that half a million children have died [in Iraq]. I mean that's more than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.
Why the US resolution must be defeated -Island Editorial
.....continued.....
Former Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Nobel Laureate, Mohamed ElBaradei, in his book, Age of Deception, Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times, highlights blatant war crimes the US-led forces have committed in Iraq. He says, "Estimates have ranged as high as eight hundred thousand Iraqi deaths during the first three years of the war. This does not count the millions maimed or wounded, or the millions displaced from their homes and stripped of their livelihoods." He asks: "Should the United Nations request an opinion from the International Court of Justice as to the legality of the Iraq War? If the answer is that the war was in fact illegal--and moreover, if consideration is given to the massive civilian casualties incurred--should not the International Criminal Court investigate whether this constitutes a 'war crime' and determine who is accountable? Should Iraq request reparations at the International Court of Justice, or another forum, for the damages incurred during a war launched in violation of international law and on the basis of falsehoods?"
So much for the US and its concern for human rights violations!
It is being argued in some quarters that the US resolution is only aimed at pressuring the Rajapaksa government to implement the LLRC recommendations. That is a brilliant feint. America's real intention is to set up a mechanism similar to the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission by assigning a supervisory role to the UNHRC packed with LTTE sympathisers. Given half a chance, they and their western masters will turn the process of implementing LLRC recommendations into a war crimes probe. How the western powers abused a UN resolution to bomb Libya and arm the anti-Gaddafi rebels to effect a regime change in that country is a case in point.
Sri Lanka must oppose the US resolution with might and main. It deserves the help of other nations to defeat the US move fraught with the danger of bringing about a very bad precedent.
Courtesy: The Island
Muslims lash out at LTTE terrorism
Recall Tiger atrocities against community
Muslim families butchered in their sleep
By Chaminda PERERA and Nadira GUNATILLKE
DailyNews.lk
March 15, 2012
A cross section of the Muslim community in Sri Lanka yesterday condemned LTTE terrorist atrocities which were aimed at ethnic cleansing.
From left: Hisbullah, Musthapha, Mowlana and Cassim
They recollected the gloomy era of the country when Muslims in the North and East were subjected to untold hardships and harassment from LTTE terrorists who wanted to carve out a separate homeland by killing tens of thousands of Muslim and Sinhala civilians.
They said that their basic rights were snatched by the LTTE during this era.
Mohammed S Anees , a farmer living in Eravur remembers how the LTTE brutally killed 173 civilians in his village on August 4, 1990.
Anees said hundreds of LTTE cadres who invaded the village with clubs and swords, began killing innocent civilians in the village who were asleep at midnight.
He said even pregnant women were not spared by LTTE terrorists.
“Infants were dashed to death,” he added.Anees said that the Muslim community in the Eastern region depend on fishing and farming.
He said that their farming activities were hampered by LTTE attacks on Muslim villages. Vast areas of arable paddy lands were left uncultivated and the economy of the people in the area also collapsed, he said.
Child Development and Women's Affairs Deputy Minister A L M Hisbullah said that the Muslim community in the North and East had to face many hardships and obstacles during the conflict.
He said that thousands of Muslims were killed and their villages destroyed by the LTTE as part of the ethnic cleansing drive to achieve what they termed a separate state for Tamils. The deputy minister said that the LTTE plundered banks in Muslim dominated areas in the North and East.
"LTTE terrorists evicted Muslims from their lands and handed them to their members in Muslim villages. The Muslim community left the villages in fear of LTTE attacks," he said. The Muslims were deprived of their basic human rights by the LTTE, Hisbullah said. "Their main sources of livelihood were fishing and farming.
The terrorists did not allow them to engage in fishing or farming during the conflict".
Western Province Governor Alavi Mowlana said that the US is suffering from a phobia and is scared of Islam which is peace.
"Islam is peace and not violence. Before preaching about human rights to Sri Lanka and other countries, the US has to rectify what they did. The LTTE did the same and brutally massacred thousands of innocent Muslims in the North and East.
The US has now forgotten what the LTTE did to innocent Sri Lankan Muslims. First of all they have to rectify it."
Technology and Research Deputy Minister Faizer Mustapha said that when the LTTE was brutally massacring innocent Muslim civilians, the US turned a blind eye and was now preaching human rights.
"The US resolution at the UNHRC will only create new problems for the smooth progress of the reconciliation process in Sri Lanka and will cause severe damage to it," he said.
Journalist and artist Nilar N Cassim said that massacring innocent Muslim civilians worshipping in mosques is one of the many barbaric acts carried out by the LTTE.
"Massacring innocent civilians who practise their religion in their religious institutions is not acceptable.
It cannot happen anywhere in the world. It is an act of beasts. The LTTE shot and chased away thousands of innocent unarmed Muslim civilians from their traditional villages," Cassim said.
‘Hands off Sri Lanka!’
By Lasanda Kurukulasuriya
New Internationalist
March 16, 2012
With a US-sponsored resolution on Sri Lanka due to come up for a vote at the UN Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva, numerous public protests have been held against the move, organized by diverse groups including trade unions, the Buddhist clergy and the government itself. The latest group to voice its opposition represents a section of Sri Lanka’s Muslims, who form an 8 per cent minority. Hundreds of Muslims clad in white and wearing traditional skull caps carried placards and chanted slogans as they marched peacefully to the US embassy on Thursday 15 March. The petition they handed over called upon ‘the government of the United States and other Western countries to desist from interfering in the country’s internal affairs’. It said: ‘We vehemently condemn the US-sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka and demand that this resolution be abandoned.’
An organization called Nabaviyyah Islamic Youth Organisation, representing a Muslim sect known as Sunna Jamath, led the protest along Colombo’s main highway but was stopped by police barricades before it reached the US mission. Risham Ahamed, a spokesperson for the group, said they had no political motivation and were not demonstrating in response to any call by the government. The demonstration was to tell the US to keep its ‘hands off Sri Lanka’ he said. ‘Don’t make this another Afghanistan or other Arab country.’
‘Hands off Sri Lanka!’
.....continued......
The US draft resolution calls for Sri Lanka to implement the recommendations of its war commission, urges the state to address accountability issues and asks the Office of the UN Human Rights chief and ‘relevant special procedures’ to provide ‘advice and technical assistance’ to Sri Lanka, and report on these matters to the Council. The government has described the resolution as ‘unnecessary, unhelpful and counterproductive.’ Sri Lanka’s ambassador, Tamara Kunanayakam, a Tamil, has accused the US of setting a dangerous precedent by selectively targeting Sri Lanka, and of insidiously seeking to politicize the Council.
The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the Organization of Islamic Co-operation (OIC), both representing large blocs of countries from the majority world, have taken the position that action in the Human Rights Council was unwarranted and that Sri Lanka should be given the opportunity to implement its domestic mechanisms for reconciliation without external pressure.
The recommendations of the government-appointed ‘Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission’ have been widely acclaimed as useful and constructive, but have been criticized by the West for not adequately addressing alleged violations of international law. The report, seen as a guide to a domestic reconciliation process, was released in December 2011. Two years earlier, government forces defeated the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ending a bloody 30-year conflict.
Within the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), the ruling coalition, none are as keenly aware of the US’s double standards in international affairs as its Muslim representatives. The fallout of US military intrusions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan resonates within the Sri Lankan Muslim community, as elsewhere in the Muslim world. Hence protest demonstrations against the US resolution, such as that led by Western Province Governor Alawi Moulana, have acquired a kind of traction that goes beyond local politics. A Colombo Municipal Council member, Azath Sally, also a Muslim, questioned the logic by which the killing of Osama Bin Laden was considered a ‘heroic act’ whereas the killing of the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran was a ‘human rights violation’. He exclaimed that this was ‘a funny kind of law’.
Ahamed says all his group wants is peace. ‘We should get together and rebuild the country. Past is past. Let the international community help us rebuild.’
Lasanda Kurukulasuriya is a Sri Lankan journalist.
My Comments at LankaWeb.com on
US resolution criticises, surges beyond LLRC
by Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka, March 16, 2012
Ananda-USA Says:
March 17th, 2012 at 1:03 am
This article by Dr. Jayatilleke supplements Gomin Dayasri’s recent comments on the looming future dangers of the US resolution at the UNHRC:
The US resolution is neither benign nor innocuous … it is a clear indication of worse actions to come. It shows that the United States has MADE A STRATEGIC DECISION to throw Sri Lanka to the wolves pursuing its global geopolitical agenda. It cares not for the feelings and well-being of the vast majority of citizens of Sri Lanka, who are just emerging from a destructive 30-year war, as long as it can attain its Neo-Colonialist objectives.
So what should we do? Let me suggest …. AGAIN:
Let Sri Lanka REDUCE the DIPLOMATIC presence and TERMINATE all “cultural” and “democracy building” activities in Sri Lanka of all countries that sponsored the UNHCR initiative against Sri Lanka. These activities are only designed to undermine and destabilize Sri Lanka, and gives them the opportunity to setup and orchestrate a regime change to place their puppets in power. Let us recall that, despite the big talk, the total US aid to Sri Lanka in 2011 was about $25 million, compared to over 2.5 billion from China.
Let Sri Lanka also CLOSE the Embassy of NORWAY, that has UNDERMINED Sri Lanka and aided terrorism in Sri Lanka for DECADES! They are continuing to aid and abet their defeated terrorist pals, are funding and sending hordes of evangelical missionaries to convert our most vulnerable citizens and enlarge their support base in Sri Lanka, and are trying to capture our emerging offshore oil production business for Norwegian oil companies.
If India VOTES against Sri Lanka, let us stop accepting Indian Aid for Rehabilitation and Reconstruction for the North & East, and reduce Indian diplomatic presence in Sri Lanka to ONLY the Indian Embassy in Colombo. Let us turn down the current carte-blanche given to Indian companies to transact business in Sri Lanka. It is simply not in our interest to put our heads in the Indian noose, if they don’t recognize their culpability for the terrorism that took over 150,000 lives of Sri Lankan citizens, and the aid they are giving now is really “war reparations”.
Let us also RETALIATE AGAINST the harrassment of Sinhala Sri Lankan citizens in Tamil Nadu with a PROHIBITION against visits by Indian Tamils to Sri Lanka. Let us not engage in business activities with Tamil Nadu based businesses. Let us SHUT THE DOOR against these Tamil Nadu RACISTS who are neck deep in discrimination against their own people, but PRESUME to have the ethical and moral standing to preach to Sri Lanka!
ENEMIES should be TREATED as ENEMIES, and Sri Lanka should protect itself from their underhand activities. Batten down the hatches, man the guns, and keep the powder dry, I say! The BARBARIAN HYPOCRITES are at our shores …. AGAIN!
If this THREAT to INVITE FOREIGN INTERFERENCE in Sri Lanka's internal affairs IS NOT TREASON, then WHAT IS TREASONOUS?
We demand that the GOSL take steps to PROSECUTE, CONVICT and PUNISH the TNA leaders not only for this, but for ALL of their TREASONOUS ACTS and TERRORIST CRIMES of the last 30 years.
IF NOT NOW, WHEN?
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Sri Lanka Tamil party to give detailed report to the UNHRC if LLRC recommendations not implemented
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 17, Colombo: Sri Lanka's major Tamil political party, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) says that a detailed report on the current situation in the country would be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva if the government fails to implement the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC).
TNA parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran has told the local media that the TNA would prepare a detailed report with evidence of the difficulties faced by the Tamil community in the country, in the event the government fails to implement the LLRC recommendations.
He has added that the report would be handed over to the UNHRC in Geneva.
He has explained that the US backed resolution on Sri Lanka, which is currently before the UNHRC, is not in any way harmful to the country.
According to Sumanthiran, the resolution calls for the implementation of the LLRC recommendations and the government's commitment to carry out the task.
Meanwhile, the TNA has officially issued a statement calling on the UNHRC to ensure that the Sri Lankan government speedily formulates a reconciliation process in the country.
"The Council must ensure that the Sri Lankan government immediately takes steps to offer a political solution to the Tamil people to resolve the long-festering and deep-seated national problem and also address serious concerns about human rights and governance," TNA leader R. Sampanthan said in a lengthy statement submitted to the UNHRC.
My Comment on Anjalika de Silva's Letter to Hillary Clinton at LankaWeb.com:
...........
Ananda-USA Says:
March 18th, 2012 at 2:52 pm
Bravo, Anjalika!
A wonderful letter directed to Hilary Clinton, the pupeteer orchestrating the US agenda against Sri Lanka.
I too will follow in your footsteps and write a letter to both Hilary Clinton and to President Obama, expressing my opposition to their current Sri Lanka Policy, and explaining how that Policy is inimical not only to Sri Lanka, but also to the United States.
It is INCOMPREHENSIBLE to me, how the United States can be SO MYOPIC in undermining Sri Lanka in this way, given that Sri Lanka is the Oldest Democracy in Asia, with Universal Franchise enjoyed by both men and women from before Sri Lanka regained her independence in 1948. Here is a functioning democracy, that has fought and won a war against a powerful murderous terrorist movement all by itself, an old friend and ally of the United States since its birth, that is striving to rehabilitate, reconstruct and reintegrate into the nation the war affected areas with our uniquely Buddhist compassion and tolerance, with declared commitment to enforce Equal Rights and Equal Responsibilities for all of our citizens as no other nation affected by terrorism and war has done in living memory, being crucified at the UN for war crimes, by our great democratic friend and ally! INCOMPREHENSIBLE!
While I fully understand the geopolitical Neo-Colonialist agenda that is driving these Machiavellian strategies of the current US administration, I oppose them completely for they are IMMORAL, UNETHICAL and SINFUL.
They are not what a great freedom-loving nation living in the shadow of God, claiming to strive for fairness and justice in the world, should perpetrating against a small nation that has defended itself, after suffering murder and mayhem for 30 long years, to protect and defend ALL of its citizens so that they would enjoy the benefits of the values of fairness and justice we claim to treasure in equal measure.
My Comment on Anjalika Silva's Letter to Hillary Clinton at LankaWeb.com:
...........
Ananda-USA Says:
March 18th, 2012 at 2:52 pm
Bravo, Anjalika!
A wonderful letter directed to Hilary Clinton, the pupeteer orchestrating the US agenda against Sri Lanka.
I too will follow in your footsteps and write a letter to both Hilary Clinton and to President Obama, expressing my opposition to their current Sri Lanka Policy, and explaining how that Policy is inimical not only to Sri Lanka, but also to the United States.
It is INCOMPREHENSIBLE to me, how the United States can be SO MYOPIC in undermining Sri Lanka in this way, given that Sri Lanka is the Oldest Democracy in Asia, with Universal Franchise enjoyed by both men and women from before Sri Lanka regained her independence in 1948. Here is a functioning democracy, that has fought and won a war against a powerful murderous terrorist movement all by itself, an old friend and ally of the United States since its birth, that is striving to rehabilitate, reconstruct and reintegrate into the nation the war affected areas with our uniquely Buddhist compassion and tolerance, with declared commitment to enforce Equal Rights and Equal Responsibilities for all of our citizens as no other nation affected by terrorism and war has done in living memory, being crucified at the UN for war crimes, by our great democratic friend and ally! INCOMPREHENSIBLE!
While I fully understand the geopolitical Neo-Colonialist agenda that is driving these Machiavellian strategies of the current US administration, I oppose them completely for they are IMMORAL, UNETHICAL and SINFUL.
They are not what a great freedom-loving nation living in the shadow of God, claiming to strive for fairness and justice in the world, should perpetrating against a small nation that has defended itself, after suffering murder and mayhem for 30 long years, to protect and defend ALL of its citizens so that they would enjoy the benefits of the values of fairness and justice we claim to treasure in equal measure.
Birds of a FEATHER,
Flock TOGETHER!
SHAME! ... the UNP is jumping into a CONJUGAL BED with TRAITORS!
So, WHAT IS NEW? NOTHING!
..............
Sri Lanka main opposition plans joint May Day rally in Jaffna with Tamil Alliance
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 18, Colombo: Sri Lanka's main opposition United National Party (UNP) is to hold a joint May Day rally in Jaffna this year with the participation of several political parties including the major Tamil political party, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA).
Other parties that are to participate in the UNP May Day rally are the New Left Front led by Wickramabahu Karunaratne, the Democratic People's Front led by Mano Ganesan, the Democratic People's Liberation Front, and the United Socialist Party.
A delegation of UNP members headed by party leader Ranil Wickremasinghe is currently on a tour in Jaffna.
Wickremasinghe has held discussions about the May Day in the Jaffna town with TNA parliamentarian E. Saravanapavan.
The UNP delegation has visited 12 towns in Jaffna and is scheduled to travel to the Mullaitivu District today. The delegation is looking at the current situation in the area and the issues faced by the people.
Meanwhile, the deputy leader of the UNP, Sajith Premadasa has said that he will not participate in the planned May Day rally to be held in Jaffna with the Tamil National Alliance.
At a discussion held in the UNP headquarters recently Premadasa had reportedly said that he is not ready to work together with a party like TNA that appears for a separate state in Sri Lanka.
Wickremasinghe is accompanied by party secretary Tissa Attanayake and parliamentarians Ravi Karunanayaka and Dr. Jayalath Jayawardena.
Both the UNP and the TNA have criticized the domestic body appointed by the President to probe Sri Lanka's armed conflict, Lessons Learnt and reconciliation Commission (LLRC), and the TNA has requested the United Nations Human Rights Council to pass a resolution against Sri Lanka presented by the United States.
However, the UNP deputy leader has said that the resolution is an infringement of internal affairs of the country and it should be defeated.
The government has vehemently opposed the UN resolution and is in a diplomatic offensive to gather support of the member states to defeat the resolution in the Council.
Iraq offers oil to Sri Lanka to avert Iran ban
March 18, 2012
COLOMBO: Iraq has come forward to offer "substantial quantities" of crude oil to Sri Lanka, as the island desperately looks for alternatives to Iranian crude, a news report said Sunday.
Iran supplies nearly 92 percent of Sri Lanka's imported crude. But supplies have hit a snag in the face of US-led sanctions aimed at spurring Tehran to abandon its nuclear programme.
The Colombo-based Sunday Times newspaper quoted Petroleum Ministry officials saying that Sri Lanka would stop crude oil imports from Iran from March 29, ahead of the US June 28th deadline.
Any country importing goods from Iran after would be subject to US penalties.
Sri Lanka's refinery, built with Italian technology in 1968, can handle Iranian or Saudi light crude and talks were underway to get more Saudi oil, as well as increase refined petroleum product imports from Iraq and Oman.
India has said it will continue to import oil from Iran, joining China in refusing to bow to intensifying US pressure not to do business with the Islamic republic.
The West fears Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb.
Tehran insists its nuclear programme is only for civilian use and refuses to scrap its uranium enrichment activities, ramping up its programme in the wake of recent Western economic sanctions against its finance and oil sectors.
D-Day in Geneva, both sides battle hard
Ameen Izzadeen reporting from Geneva
SundayObserver.lk
March 18, 2012
Sri Lanka has intensified its diplomatic efforts in Geneva to defeat a United States-sponsored resolution -- with a large delegation comprising ministers, deputy ministers, diplomats, ruling party politicians and legal experts working round the clock.
As part of these diplomatic efforts, the President’s Human Rights Special Envoy and Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, who is spearheading Sri Lanka’s fight, has met a group of ambassadors from Like-Minded Group (LMG) countries on Thursday and Friday and discussed a common strategy to defeat the US-backed motion.
Mr. Samarasinghe met ambassadors of 15 LMG countries including China, Algeria, Cuba, Pakistan, Senegal, Russia, Brazil and Ecuador and said he was optimistic about the outcome. Sarath Kongahage, Sri Lanka’s ambassador in Berlin, also met several envoys.
Mr. Samarasinghe said Pakistan, Cuba and Sri Lanka were working out a statement which would be circulated among the envoys of member countries of the United Nations Human Rights Council for their signature.
The Sunday Times learns both the US and the European Union have also stepped up diplomatic efforts to ensure that the resolution against Sri Lanka is passed.
Diplomats of the US and the EU are visiting the capitals of the UNHRC member-states, many of which have pledged support to Sri Lanka, to urge them to vote for the resolution., which calls on the Sri Lankan government to implement the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission and investigate war crimes alleged to have taken place during the last stages of the war.
The Non-Aligned Countries, the Organisation of the Islamic Countries and several African countries have pledged their support to Sri Lanka, but diplomatic sources said some African countries were now wavering.
The Sunday Times also learns that the United States has communicated to the Sri Lankan government that it was going ahead with the resolution. The US has also told the Indian government that it had no intention to withdraw the resolution, the Sunday Times learns.
While Sri Lanka continues its diplomatic efforts aimed at winning the required number to defeat the resolution, it is also beset with the task of countering a series of NGO-led side events at the UN premises on the sidelines of the ongoing UNHRC sessions.
Tomorrow (March 19), the Society for Threatened People’s International and the Minority Rights Group will hold a side event on ‘human rights in Sri Lanka”.
It is believed that at least sections of the controversial Channel 4 video documentary ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: A War Unpunished,” will be screened at this event. One of the panelists billed to address this side event is a family member of the disappeared activist.
D-Day in Geneva, both sides battle hard
.....continued.....
Sri Lankan delegation members believe that the wife of the abducted journalist Pradeep Ekneligoda will address the event. Sri Lanka will hold a counter side-event on Tuesday to explain its part of the story with a new video documentary – a sequel to Lies Agreed Upon – to counter the charges leveled at Sri Lankan armed forces in the Channel 4 documentary.
In a side event organized by the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR), its President Nimalka Fernando claimed women of minority people in the highly militarized Sri Lanka north were facing sexual harassment. She also claimed her life was in danger because she had come to Geneva to explain human rights violations in Sri Lanka.
The Council for Liberal Democracy in Sri Lanka, which recently released a draft on National Action Plan for Reconciliation, a document which has recommended sweeping reforms, held two side events where Presidential Reconciliation Advisor Rajiva Wijesinha, Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies Chairman Jeevan Thiyagarajah and former ambassador and former Human Rights Commission member Javed Yusuf, explained their views on reconciliation and urged the international community to give Sri Lanka time and space to implement the LLRC recommendations and measures aimed at reconciliation.
Sri Lanka: UK, France Tried to Interfere
Xinhua
Web Editor: Yihang
March 18, 2012
Sri Lanka said Sunday that both Britain and France tried to influence President Mahinda Rajapaksa to stop the war against Tamil Tiger rebels during its final stages.
The Sri Lankan Defense Ministry quoted Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa as saying that during a visit to Sri Lanka in 2009, former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband had urged the president to stop the war.
However the defense secretary said that the attempt had failed and as a result of the president's firm resolve and unswerving commitment, Western pressure was resisted and the final objective was achieved.
"During the last stages of the war, when certain Western governments with vested interests tried to intervene and halt the progress of the military, the firm resolve and commitment of the leadership was very clear to see," Rajapaksa said.
He noted that during the entire war effort, all those in Sri Lanka's leadership positions were highly motivated because they knew beyond a doubt that eradicating terrorism was the only way to create a better future for the people of Sri Lanka.
"There was never any doubt about the grave challenges we would face along the way, nor was there any doubt about the threats there would be to our lives. However, despite these threats, we persisted because we knew that what we were doing was correct, and would ultimately benefit all Sri Lankans," he added.
Sri Lanka defeated the rebels in 2009 after 30 years of war but is now facing allegations of committing human rights abuses during the final push to end the conflict.
The UN Human Rights Council will take a vote on a U.S. sponsored resolution on Sri Lanka which calls for accountability and the immediate implementation of recommendations by a local war commission.
Lanka resolution issue: Centre slams 'campaign' against Congress
PTI, Puducherry
March 18, 2012
With pressure from Dravidian parties to back a US-sponsored resolution in UNHRC against Sri Lanka for alleged war crimes, the Centre today slammed the "campaign by some parties and Tamil outfits" against Congress and UPA on the issue.
Congress leaders and workers in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry were firm that the Centre should support resolution at the UNHRC meeting in Geneva, Minister of State in PMO, V Narayanasamy told reporters here but did not mention the name of any parties or outfits.
A delegation of Congress leaders and MPs from Tamil Nadu had presented a memorandum to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently urging that India support the resolution, he said and expressed hope that Singh would take a favourable decision.
The Prime Minister had also assured the delegation that he would sympathetically consider their plea, Narayanasamy said.
He, however, said it was "disheartening to see that some political parties and Tamil outfits in Tamil Nadu were indulging in a misleading campaign against Congress and UPA government causing confusion among people by spreading wrong message that Congress was against the resolution."
"This is a clear attempt on the part of these parties to divert the attention of the people and to seek political mileage," Narayanasamy said.
Without naming the parties, he said some political parties, indulging in "anti-Congress and anti-Centre" campaign, were also trying to whip up sentiments of the people and creating an illusion that Congress was against the Tamils in Sri Lanka.
He reiterated that Congress and the Centre would not remain a silent spectator wherever human rights are violated anywhere in the world.
AIADMK supremo and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, DMK president M Karunanidhi and MDMK leader Vaiko had taken up the issue with the Prime Minister recently. UPA's key constituent, DMK, has announced convening of its high-level committee on March 20 to discuss the issue.
NORWAY continues its merry way, working hand-in-glove with LTTE terrorists to crucify Sri Lanka!
KICK the NORWEGIAN EMBASSY OUT OF SRI LANKA!
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GTF lobbies Solheim and key Norwegian MPs
By Shamindra Ferdinando
Island.lk
March 18, 2012
In the wake Norway pledging its vote for US-led resolution against Sri Lanka at the current session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, a delegation from the Global Tamil Forum (GTF) met Norwegian politicians last Friday (March 16) to intensify their campaign against President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government.
The GTF delegation discussed the situation with one-time peace facilitator Erik Solheim, now Norway’s Minister of Environment and International Development, Opposition and Conservative party leader Ms Erna Solberg and MP Karin Woldseth, a key member of Foreign Affairs and Defence Parliamentary Select Committee.
Norway is one of the 47 members of the UNHRC. Both US and Norway functioned as Sri Lanka’s peace co-chairs, along with the EU and Japan. Except Japan all other members of the group have lambasted Sri Lanka over accountability issues, whereas Japan took softer stand. The Sri Lankan government welcomed the Japanese declaration that no country has a perfect human rights record.
GTF’s Suren Surendiran told an event organized by the GoSL on the sidelines of the ongoing UNHRC sessions that an international inquiry was needed in Sri Lanka, though the global Tamil community accepted some positive features in the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) report.
Responding o a query by The Sunday Island in Geneva, Surendiran emphasized the right of the Diaspora to push for an external inquiry on the basis of UNSG Ban Ki-moon’s Panel of Experts (PoE) report.
External Affairs Ministry sources told The Sunday Island that those who had been working for the LTTE established the GTF on Feb. 24, 2010 in the UK parliament in the presence of UK Foreign Secretary, David Hague and his predecessor, David Miliband, to pursue the Eelam project. Those at the helm of the organization now wouldn’t have dared, when the LTTE was in control, sources said.
Miliband spearheads the ‘Channel 4’ attack on Sri Lanka in ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished’ launched last week. The Labour heavyweight demanded an international probe on Sri Lanka.
Responding to a query, a senior government official said that the GTF’s visit to Oslo took place in the wake of Norway indicting mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik for killing of 77 persons, mostly children, to protest against large scale migration of Muslims to Europe and Scandinavian countries.
The assassin declared that his strategy was influenced by the LTTE massacring Muslims in the Northern and Eastern Provinces at an early stage of the conflict in Sri Lanka.
Norwegian prosecutors earlier this month indicted Breivik, a former Norwegian diplomat’s son, of terror and murder charges for slaying 77 people in a bomb and shooting rampage but said the confessed mass killer likely won’t go to prison for the country’s worst peacetime massacre.
They said they considered the 33-year-old Right-wing extremist psychotic and would seek a sentence of involuntary commitment to psychiatric care instead of imprisonment unless new information about his mental health emerges during the trial set to start in April.
GTF lobbies Solheim and key Norwegian MPs
....continued.....
As expected, they charged him under provisions in Norway’s anti-terror law that refers to violent acts intended to disrupt key government functions or spread fear among the population.
Breivik has confessed to the July 22 attacks but denies criminal guilt, portraying the victims as "traitors" for embracing immigration policies he claims will result in an Islamic colonization of Norway.
Failed peace facilitator Norway last week told Sri Lanka to address violations of international laws that allegedly took place during its battle against the LTTE.
In a statement before the current session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) session, Norway said that it expected Sri Lanka to implement recommendations of Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) and to address alleged violations of international law without delay. Norway said that it would support the US-resolution on Sri Lanka.
Denmark’s Permanent Representative in Geneva, Ambassador Steffen Smidt, on behalf of the EU stepped-up pressure on Sri Lanka over accountability issues. He reiterated: "The protection of human rights, the respect of the rule of law and addressing the issue of accountability are, in addition to their intrinsic value, necessary steps towards national reconciliation.
The EU demanded that Sri Lanka should engage constructively with the UNSG Ban Ki-moon and the UNHRC on the ‘Darusman report’ as well as the implementation of the LLRC recommendations.
A senior government spokesman said that that those demanding accountability on the part of Sri Lanka remained silent on atrocities committed by the LTTE. The official urged Norway and EU to inquire into the alleged involvement of sections of the Tamil Diaspora in providing arms, ammunition and equipment to the LTTE and raising funds on behalf of the LTTE.
Norway and the EU had also refrained from commenting on atrocities committed by Western forces since 9/11, the official said, alleging Western powers were using human rights as an excuse to destabilize those refusing to follow their dictates.
Sri Lanka heralds nanotechnology
By Lalin FERNANDOPULLE
SundayObserver.lk
March 18, 2012
Sri Lanka will be a destination for nanotechnology research and development, said Chairman (SLINTEC) Dr. Mahesh Amalean, at a ceremony to launch the partnership between SLINTEC and Nagarjuna Fertilisers and Chemicals Ltd,(NFCL), India to develop the next generation nanotechnology-based plant nutrition solutions.
Dr. Amalean said that the partnership with Nagarjuna Group, a global leader in chemicals and fertiliser is the first step towards achieving this vision.
In a brief span of three years SLINTEC has been able to gain global recognition due to its accomplishment in research and development.
“The strategic partnership is a result of extensive scientific research of eminent scientists in the country. The international collaboration on nanotechnoly is proof of Sri Lanka's potential in the science and technology sector”, he said.
The partnership will boost productivity and income of farmers and create a sustainable business for both countries. Nagarjuna will purchase first generation nano plant nutrition products taking it from proof of concept to proof of value for commercialisation.
NFCL is a recognised integrated agri-fertiliser brand in India. The company was set up in 1974.
SLINTEC will carry out research and Nagarjuna will develop the product.The investment of the project is estimated at Rs. 800 million.
Dr. Amalean paid tribute to the team that initiated the collaboration which is the first international venture of SLINTEC which gained steady momentum during the past three years in research and development.
SLINTEC was set up as a result of a nanotechnology initiative approved by the Cabinet in 2006. The institute which began research in August 2009 is a private-public partnerhsip enterprise.The institute has filed seven patents and is recognised for world class research.
Senior Advisor Nagarjuna Fertilisers and Chemicals, R.S Nanda said that Nagarjuna has a vision for research and development and added that the strategic tie-up will help enhance nutritional efficiency and address environment degradation.
Vice President and Head of Emerging Technologies Division, NFCL Dr. Banibrata Pandey said that NFCL aims at building a long-term business partnership with SLINTEC as an exclusive nanotechnology research hub for its nano plant nutrition program.
‘Set up your Universities in Sri Lanka, we will help you’
By Steve A. Morrell
Island.lk
March 17, 2012
Minister of Higher Education, S. B. Dissanayake said the Sri Lankan Government would encourage Universities in Britain to establish their seats of learning in Sri Lanka. This possibility would be within Education policy of the Government to eventually establish Sri Lanka as a Regional education hub in Asia.
"We will help you. The British Council here has already moved forward to conduct exams and allied courses in English to enrich our students on use of English ", he said at the British Council’s 19th Annual Education UK Exhibition, where he was the chief guest on Friday.
Inauguration of the three day exhibition attracted students and post tertiary educated persons intending to pursue further studies in the UK or in Sri lanka.
Country Director, The British Council, in Sri Lanka, Tony Reilly, in a brief note of welcome said the Minister’s vision to change the landscape for Higher Education in Sri Lanka was clearly set out for the future of education here. 56 Universities from The UK were represented at the Exhibition; suggesting wide choices for opportunities that could encourage students to select subjects best suited for their future.
The British Council’s ‘ Going Global’ International conference, to be held next week in London, would be a forum that would attract over 1000 delegates . The Minister would represent Sri Lanka. ‘ I would look forward to meeting you there’, Tony Reilly said.
Opportunities offered would broad base employability and such qualification would ensure suitable job placings.
The International Conference would present Government’s plans to establish Sri Lanka as a regional educational hub and will address a global audience of top level higher education stake holders.
Manager International Higher Education, The British Council, Niroshi Siriwansa, and Manager Marketing and communications, Randima Jayasinghe, said organization for this event started in June last year, and since then clinical placing of various structures had to be decided and in place well before the event.’ What you see this morning is the culmination of hard work ‘
Senior Lecturer in Sport & Event Management, Ian Webster, of the Coventry University, and International Officer, South & South East Asia, Coventry University, Kevin Dunn, talking to the ‘The Island’, said the course fee including duration, and choice of study would cost about Rs. 1.5 million.
Reiterating this figure was barely an assessment that could vary, more or less, would be each student’s commitment. They further said there were allied alternatives that included study in Sri Lanka, conducted by the University, equally valuable for academic qualification. Additionally, distance learning was also available based on modules and connected costs which were more cost effective and equally valuable. Choices were varied and quite substantial they said.
There were other scatological focuses that were also important. For instance educational tourism, and Sport tourism. For instance in about two weeks when the English cricket team tours Sri Lanka, people from the UK who would be here to watch and numbers in arrivals not be insignificant .
Sri Lanka in its present atmosphere of openness could benefit from opportunities that would come its way.
Sri Lanka cannot remain unaffected by the economic downturns of its best customers.
Growth rates will slow, but will rise again as world economies recover.
In the meantime, Sri Lanka has to make sure that excessive debt servicing costs don't overwhelm the national economy, by making only those investments that will pay for themselves quickly.
................
Sri Lanka's post-war economic miracle turns sour
ArabTimesOnline.com
COLOMBO, March 18, 2012 (AFP) -Sri Lanka's president began his second term vowing an economic miracle after decades of conflict, but the post-war boom is already fraying, putting his record on economic management to the test.
Mahinda Rajapakse launched his second six-year term in 2010 promising to turn Sri Lanka into the "wonder of Asia" by doubling GDP per capita income to $4,000 by 2014.
After the end of the island's civil war in 2009, brought about by an army onslaught that is dogged by war crime allegations, Sri Lanka reaped a peace dividend that has seen some of the fastest development in Asia.
But now, less than three years later, the government must tackle a ballooning trade deficit, a falling currency, and discontent about rising living costs after huge hikes in fuel and electricity prices.
"Right now our problem is the trade deficit," Sri Lanka's Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapakse, who is the president's younger brother, said last week. "In fact, I would say it is our only problem."
The government has allowed the rupee to depreciate and slapped credit ceilings on commercial banks to discourage loans that could fuel further imports.
Last year's trade deficit hit nearly $10 billion, or a fifth of the country's GDP, imposing a massive strain on the country's dwindling foreign reserves and hurting the island's credit-worthiness.
Rajapakse's former foreign minister Mangala Samaraweera accuses the administration of "mismanagement and corruption" for the economic woes which has seen the currency drop 10 percent against the dollar this year.
"The looming economic crisis is not something that happened suddenly," says Samaraweera, an MP from the opposition United National Party. "It's the result of mismanagement and corruption in the past five to six years."
The Colombo Stock Exchange, which doubled in value in 2010 and was Asia's best performer, has slid this year, shedding 10 percent of its value.
Sri Lankan economist and former central bank deputy governor W. A. Wijewardena believes the economy is in trouble despite an official 7.2 percent growth forecast for 2012.
He says the balance of payments problem will have a knock-on effect on Sri Lanka's ability to service its large commercially raised foreign debt, the value of the local currency and domestic prices.
The country needs to borrow heavily to finance the trade deficit and repay debt which could push the country into a vicious debt cycle, experts warn. The government has insisted, however, that it does not risk a sovereign default.
The government raised fuel prices by up to 49 percent and electricity by 40 percent last month, blaming the move on surging global crude prices.
Several public demonstrations against the rising living costs in the island's south last month were brutally put down by police with at least one demonstrator killed during anti-government riots.
"The need for making these changes (increasing prices) had been felt by the economy for a long time and he problem had accumulated to an explosive level," Wijewardena said.
MP Samaraweera said the government's failure to improve its human rights record and its anti-Western rhetoric had also dampened foreign interest in the economy which should have increased after the end of the separatist war.
Sri Lanka's post-war economic miracle turns sour
.....continued.....
Foreign direct investments fell by 14 percent to $516 million in 2010, the first full year after government forces crushed ethnic Tamil rebels in the north of the country, according to the Central Bank.
Since the end of fighting, Sri Lanka has been facing allegations of war crimes and is resisting international calls for an independent probe.
The European Union withdrew concessionary tariffs for imports in 2010, accusing Sri Lanka of failing to meet human rights standards, but the country has managed to maintain its exports at the same level.
Samaraweera said Sri Lanka would not be able to attract bigger and better quality foreign investors by ignoring rights issues raised by the international community. Sri Lanka risks isolation, he warned.
"We will become the new Burma (Myanmar) of Asia unless we do something about improving our human rights record," Samaraweera said.
The Centre for Policy Alternatives think-tank in Colombo says the government is likely to try to mask domestic economic problems with anti-Western rhetoric.
"The government has already organised anti-Western demonstrations to divert attention," said the think-tank's director Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu. "But they won't be able to do it for long because people are feeling the pinch."
I have ALWAYS MAINTAINED that India will be UNABLE at SOME POINT to withstand BLACKMAIL by the TamilNadu Racists, and that Sri Lanka will have to prepare for that eventuality with other ALLIANCES to PROTECT ITSELF.
It appears that THAT TIME HAS COME! The Government of India cannot resist the threat by the TamilNadfu parties to withdraw from the Governing Coalition, and is now ready to throw Sri Lanka to the Wolves.
This is the Faustian Bargain that Hillary Clinton sealed with the Racists of TamilNadu when she visited TamilNadu recently.
This DEMONSTRATES CLEARLY the FOLLY of RELYING on India for our SECURITY & INTEGRITY.
If India, which is responsible for initially creating, training, funding, depositing and supporting Tamil Terrorists in Sri Lanka, and causing 150,000 deaths and untold misery for our people, is UNABLE to DO THE RIGHT THING to ATONE FOR ITS CRIMES against the People of Sri Lanka, the TIME HAS ALSO COME for Sri Lanka to DISTANCE ITSELF from the Indian Embrace and FEND FOR ITSELF without regard to India's concerns.
IT IS THE TIME TO CUT THIS GORDIAN KNOT, NOW & FOREVER!
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India likely to vote against Sri Lanka for alleged war crimes, says PM
NDTV.com
March 19, 2012
New Delhi: The Prime Minister said today in Parliament that India is inclined to vote against Sri Lanka at a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. A resolution against the Sri Lankan government for alleged war crimes and human rights violations has been moved by the US, Norway and France. "We do not yet have the final text of the US-sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka. But we are inclined to vote in favour," he told the Lok Sabha today.
Dr Manmohan Singh's comments will likely pacify his ally, the DMK, which has threatened to pull out of the coalition at the Centre if India either abstained or supported Sri Lanka at the vote. The DMK has 18 Lok Sabha MPs and is needed for the government's survival.
All parties from Tamil Nadu have been urging the Centre to take a strong stand against Sri Lanka and the rights of its Tamil population. Till today, the government had been non-committal in its response.
The PM's comments were made during his Motion of Thanks to the President's address. Last week, President Pratibha Patil presented the government's agenda in the House, inaugurating the Budget session of Parliament. The PM used his Motion of Thanks today to also address the concerns of another major ally - Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress. Her party has been opposed to the powers granted to the proposed National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC). Ms Banerjee and several other chief ministers have told the PM that the NCTC's right to search and arrest suspects in any state violate the federal structure of the country.
Today, the PM said that a detailed discussion would be held with all chief ministers on the NCTC on April 16. Till then, the anti-terror agency will not be commissioned. This morning, the Trinamool had made it clear that it expected this assurance.
Daya Master ... LTTE propagandist ... says Channel 4 Videos were fabricated in 2002 by the LTTE!
.............
LTTE fabricated videos to gain propaganda advantage: ex-rebel
PTI
March 20, 2012
Colombo, Mar 19 (PTI) The Tamil Tigers fabricated video footage to demonise Sri Lankan military and distributed them among international media to gain propaganda advantage, the now defunct LTTE's former media co-ordinator has claimed. Velayudam Dayanidhi alias Daya Master told state-owned ITN television that fabricated footage produced in 2002 during the ceasefire with the army was distributed internationally. "The footage used by Channel 4 are those fabricated footage issued by the LTTE," Daya Master said. The British Channel 4 television telecast video footage titled 'Sri Lanka killing fields 1 and 2' and 'Sri Lanka killing fields - war crimes unpunished' which it alleged carry incriminating evidence of war crimes committed by Lankan troops. The government has dismissed the Channel 4 videos as fabrications. On the allegation of LTTE chief V Prabakaran's 12-year- old son Balachandran's killing by army in the latest Channel 4 video, Daya Master said Balachandran was under tight protection of LTTE guards and he may have been shot by LTTE guards when tried to flee. The government has accused the Channel 4 of running a smear campaign against Sri Lanka to coincide with the on going UN Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva. PTI CORR ZH AKJ ZH
Toxicity of Vitamins
By Dr. Nishan Wijesinha (Consultant/Director) MIS Services 107, St. Antony’s Road,
Colombo 3
LankaWeb.com
March 19, 2012
When people start to look around for supplements they naturally are looking to get the most for their money. That is only natural. And of course the companies that sell vitamins try to get your attention by printing in large print how much each capsule or pill contains: this one has 400 IU´s, another 4000, and a third 10,000 IU. The use of supplements is increasing and so is the number of fortified foods. The question that arises, is whether we need to worry about getting too much of a good thing. And the answer is yes and no.
Vitamins are grouped into two broad categories: water soluble vitamins (thiamine, niacin, riboflavin, pantothenate, vitamin B12, folic acid, ascorbic acid) and fat soluble vitamins (vitamin E (tocopherols), vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin K). It is a general rule that there is very little danger of consuming toxic levels of water soluble vitamins; because they are soluble in water, their elimination from the body is very efficient. So when the body recognizes that the intake of water soluble vitamins exceeds daily needs, the elimination process becomes more efficient and the excess is voided from the body in the urine.
With fat soluble vitamins there is more danger. Fat soluble vitamins are not as quickly eliminated from the body, but rather are stored in fat tissues and in various organs throughout the body. The regulation of the body levels of these vitamins is therefore not as precise as for the water soluble vitamin consumption at levels above those required can mean the build up of toxic levels of fat soluble vitamins in the body.
For some people supplements may be a way of making up for inadequate or improper nutrition, but attention should be paid to the total intake of all nutrients supplementation to avoid toxic results.
Toxicity Table
vitamin A
Overdose Level: 10,000IU units/day
Symptoms: irritability, fatigue, insomnia, painful bones and joints, abnormal bone growth, loss of hair, itchy skin, anorexia, decreased blood clotting time, birth defects, abortions. In children: malaise and fatigue, desquamation of the skin and mucous membranes, abnormal growth, and pain an tenderness in the long bones. Pseudotumour cerebri, manifesting as headache and irritability
vitamin E
Overdose Level: If you are not an Athlete any dose (probably high)
Symptoms: Absolute increase in blood pressure
vitamin D
Overdose Level: 4000IU /day
Symptoms: anorexia, nausea, diarrhea, muscular weakness, joint pains, calcification of soft tissues, resorption of bone. In children: weakness, lethargy, anorexia and constipation, and chronic overdosage results in hypercalcemia, nephrocalcinosis and eventually azotemia
vitamin K3 (menadione)
Overdose Level: 400IU/day
Symptoms: possible thrombosis, vomiting, porphynuria in pregnancy can cause jaundice in the newborn, block the effects of oral anticoagulants.
vitamin K1 (phytonadione)
Overdose Level: Not considered
toxic
vitamin K2(menaquinone)
Overdose Levekl: Not considered
toxic
Muddying the waters, the Indian way
Island.com
Editorial
March 19, 2012
India continues to blow hot and cold about the US resolution against Sri Lanka in Geneva. Its gobbledygook defies comprehension, to say the least. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh yesterday told the Lok Sabha that India was inclined to vote for it if it covers ‘our objectives namely the achievement of a future for the Tamil community in Sri Lanka that is based on equality, dignity, justice and self respect’.
It was only the other day that the Indian government made it very clear that it was opposed to any country-specific resolution at the UNHRC. We thought India had taken a principled stand on the issue. What are India’s real ‘objectives’ that Prime Minister Singh says his government is trying to achieve through its support for the US resolution? He has specified only one of them––a future for the Tamil community in Sri Lanka based on equality, dignity, justice and respect’. But, what are the other ‘OBJECTIVES’? He has left one none the wiser!
Meanwhile, Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna has said the central government will study the draft of the US resolution on Sri Lanka and consult Tamil MPs before taking a call. Are we to gather that Prime Minister Singh has expressed his government’s inclination to vote for a resolution that it has not yet studied?
Although PM Singh has left much unsaid in his statement to Parliament, what he barely said has presumably yielded dividends. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa has, at long last, given her government’s consent for the controversial Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, which she opposed tooth and nail, causing its construction to be stalled. You scratch my back and I will scratch yours, eh?
While the Indian government is prevaricating, obfuscating the main issue and running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, editor of the Tamil weekly, Thuglak and former Rajya Sabha member, Cho S. Ramaswamy, has had the courage to swim against the tide. In an interview with the Deccan Chronicle, he has said, while calling upon Sri Lanka to respect minority rights––quite rightly so––that terrorism is no solution and dismissed the Tamil Nadu campaign for the anti-Sri Lankan resolution in Geneva as uncalled for. His is a voice of sanity!
Ramaswamy has rightly pointed out that in moving the anti-Sri Lankan resolution, the US has not been driven by any love for human rights. He sees an ulterior motive for the US move. “What happened when the UNHCR spoke about [alleged violations by] Israel? The US attacked it and said that it was becoming political…. ‘You are doing this country-specific thing and that won’t do’, the US said. And that’s what India says. Perhaps, the US has come up with this resolution just to show that there are human rights violations elsewhere, too, in order to divert the world’s attention from Israel. Why should India be interested in it? Why should the Tamil champions be interested in it?”
Muddying the waters, the Indian way
.....continued.....
The US has done just that! It has succeeded in distracting the attention of the UNHRC from its own war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and the allegations of war crimes against Israel by means of its resolution on Sri Lanka. It has drawn a human rights red herring across its trail! Washington, it may be recalled, shot down a UN report––the Goldstone Report as it has come to be popularly known––on alleged crimes Israel committed against Palestinians. It has also turned a blind eye to blatant human rights violations in Bahrain and Libya, where people are being abducted, tortured, raped, robbed and butchered by the western-backed ‘liberators’ who ousted Gaddafi.
Ramaswamy poses a very pertinent question which India ought to take serious note of. “Suppose the US or some other country sponsors a similar resolution tomorrow on Kashmir. Are we going to honour it?” If the US resolution against Sri Lanka is ratified by the UNHRC, that will set a very bad precedent and no country, unless it is an ally of the US, will be safe. In such an eventuality, the US and its friends will be able to interfere in the affairs of any state via the UNHRC.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush had the audacity to tell the world: “You are either with us or with the terrorists”. The Obama administration has apparently sent a different message to the countries affected by terrorism through its anti-Sri Lankan resolution: “If you are not with us, we will be with your terrorists!”
Any country that votes for the US resolution in Geneva will, in so doing, not only endorse the US double standards on human rights but also give the western bloc carte blanche to use human rights as a weapon against the nations that refuse to toe its line, while protecting the worst war criminals and human rights violators.
Unfortunately, these "bilateral relations" between Sri Lanka and India will NOT BE SUFFICIENT to induce India to confront the Tamil Racists of Tamil Nadu, when the survival of their own Governing Coalition is threatened by the withdrawal of TamilNadu support!
That is the BASIC REALITY of Indo-Sri Lankan relations that the good Minister G.L. Pieris, and the GOSL, must recognize, and prepare other ALLIANCES to DEFEND Sri Lanka against, IRRESPECTIVE of India's Concerns.
India has been, and will ALWAYS be, an UNRELIABLE ALLY at best as long as TamilNadu politicians hold sway as KINGMAKERS in the Governance of India at the Centre.
This situation is no different from the KINGMAKER role that Tamil parties played in Sri Lanka not too long ago, pitting the SLFP against the UNP and denying both parties sufficient power to RULE IN THE NATIONAL INTEREST, and act decisively against the terrorism that plagued our country. It is only recently that the UPFA has been able to win a sufficient majority by rescuing the nation from the LTTE.
Our love for our Indian Cousins is NOT RETURNED, and has only brought us VAST DESTRUCTION. It promises to do so AGAIN, unless we break free from the Indian Embrace.
As such, Sri Lanka must now SEIZE THIS OPPORTUNITY to roll back Indo-Sri Lankan agreements inimical to Sri Lanka, such as the 13th Amendment imposed by India using the threat of military force, and to make Sri Lanka TRULY INDEPENDENT of this STIFLING INDIAN EMBRACE!
India WILL ALWAYS FEND FOR ITSELF.
SO SHOULD Sri Lanka!
To India we say:
We long wooed your daughter, but our suit you denied.
Love swells like the Solway,
and ebbs like its tide!
VAYA CON DIOS, India!
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Sri Lanka asks India to reconsider its stance on UN resolution
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 20, Colombo: Sri Lanka has asked India to reconsider its stance to support the United Nation resolution against the country to be taken for a vote on Thursday at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Sri Lanka's External Affairs Minister Prof. G. L. Peiris Tuesday has asked his Indian counterpart S. M. Krishna in a phone conversation to reconsider India's decision on the grounds of 'excellent bilateral relations" the two countries have, Indian media reports said.
The Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh yesterday bowed to the pressure brought on his government by the political parties in Tamil Nadu, especially its coalition partner DMK which has 18 seats in Lok sabha, and stated that India is likely to support the United States sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka.
"I may assure the House that we are inclined to vote in favor of a resolution that we hope will advance our objective, namely, the achievement of the future for the Tamil community in Sri Lanka that is marked by equality, dignity, justice and self-respect," Singh told the lower House in Indian parliament Monday.
Krishna has reportedly noted the pressures from the Tamil political parties over the issue to the Sri Lankan minister and assured to remain engaged over the issue.
The US sponsored resolution is aimed at pressuring Sri Lanka to expeditiously implement the recommendations made by the domestic body Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) and to investigate the alleged war crimes and humanitarian law violations by its troops during the three-decade long conflict that ended in 2009 with the annihilation of the Tamil Tiger terrorist group LTTE.
U.S. Embassy in Sri Lanka partners with local businesses on Biz+ program
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 20, Colombo: The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the development arm of the U.S. Embassy, has awarded the first grant under its Biz+ program in Sri Lanka on last Friday (March 16).
The US$275,000 grant will help Jeyantha's Katcovalam Ice Factory expand its ice production from six to 26 tons per day, meeting growing demand from fishermen and traders who transport fresh fish to Colombo and elsewhere.
The Biz+ program supports local businesses, increasing economic growth and job creation in recovering areas. The program provides grants along with technical and managerial assistance to small- and medium-size businesses.
"USAID�s latest initiative, Biz+, will open up jobs after decades of conflict. This grant will augment incomes of fishermen and fish traders by meeting the demand for ice in the region and benefit others along the value chain, such as transporters," said USAID Mission Director Jim Bednar.
"This is the ultimate aim of Biz+: to help improve living standards of vulnerable populations and stimulate the region�s economic growth,"Bednar has said.
Jeyantha has invested some US$360,000 in the ice factory. Speaking at the signing ceremony, Mr. Thirunavukkarasu Senthan, CEO of Jeyantha Industrial Park in Point Pedro, Jaffna District said, "We will continue to increase activities and create new jobs as an ongoing process. Ice, cold room facilities and a fisheries harbor are basic requirements for the success of multiday fishing. The common thread is creating jobs while providing a service to the immediate community."
The grant will fund the purchase and installation of environmentally-friendly refrigeration units at a new central facility, and will support localized cooling and ice distribution centers. Biz+ will also provide technical assistance to improve the design of the company's operations, to help cut costs of wasted cold water.
USAID's visiting Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Asia Bureau, Denise Rollins signed the grant. The grant award came as part of Denise Rollins's three-day visit to the island to review progress of USAID-supported activities.
The world's greatest abuser of "human rights" in far-off lands in the developing world, has the CHUTZPAH to condemn Sri Lanka defending its own people against the world's most vicious terrorist movement!
What HYPOCRISY by the NAKED Emperor!
Will the WORLD stand for it?
Will TRUTH & JUSTICE PREVAIL?
...............
U.S. claims to have UN support for independent probe on Sri Lankan war crimes
AsainAge.com
March 20, 2012
The United States has said it gained United Nations’ support to push Sri Lanka to allow an independent probe into government atrocities carried out in country's 26-year civil war against the Tamil Tigers in 2009.
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council Eileen Donahoe said the council is set to accept a U.S. resolution to that effect during a meeting in Geneva.
"We don't think of this as a symbolic vote. We see this as a meaningful effort to encourage the Sri Lankan government to take credible steps…We fear the government of Sri Lanka might fail to take those credible steps,” The Wall Street Journal quoted Donahoe, as saying.
He admitted that it is difficult to forge the diplomatic consensus for the resolution taking into account that the abuses occurred three years ago and are not a part of an ongoing crisis.
The U.S. resolution will ask for Sri Lanka to set a timeframe for implementing the recommendations of its commission and calling on the country to allow an independent probe into war crimes.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka is looking increasingly isolated in that effort with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh indicating that India is 'inclined' to back the resolution.
The US views the resolution as a way of warning Sri Lanka to not hide abuses during the final months of the war that according to the United Nations had killed 40,000 civilians.
Sri Lankan officials said the U.S. is meddling in its internal affairs in the wake of the country trying to forge reconciliation between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil populations.
"We feel the U.S. is being intrusive. Nobody likes pressure being brought unnecessarily without giving us time and space for reconciliation," Rajapaksa’s spokesperson Bandula Jayasekara said.
Sri Lanka donates rice to refugees in Horn of Africa
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 20, Colombo: Sri Lanka today donated 10,000 metric tons of rice to the World Food Programme (WFP) to be sent to Ethiopia to aid the refugees from Somalia who have fled extreme drought, famine and conflict.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa symbolically handed over the rice consignment of rice to the Acting Country Director of WFP, Ms. Azeb Asrat at Temple Trees Tuesday.
This is the first ever donation from the Government of Sri Lanka to WFP's food operations abroad. The first shipment of 500 metric tons is scheduled to leave Colombo port in the next few days.
A group of school students from Kurunegala Welagedara Central School visiting the Temple Trees was also present during the handing over and the President and the WFP Acting Country Director explained to the students the situation in the east African countries.
President Rajapaksa explained that it is the nature of Sri Lankans to help those who are in need and Sri Lanka is donating this consignment to benefit the people in east Africa affected by the drought and famine.
Ms. Asrat thanked President Rajapaksa for the goodwill gesture and said the donation will help provide critical food and nutritional assistance to the people affected by the famine in Horn of Africa.
Acting Minister of External Affairs D. E. W. Gunasekera, Minister of Co-operatives and Internal Trade Johnston Fernando, Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunga, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Secretary to the Ministry of External Affairs Karunaratne Amunugama and representatives of the WFP were also present at the occasion.
(Photos by Sudath Silva)
Sri Lanka circulates document in Geneva noting legal and procedural implications of the UN resolution
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 21, Colombo: The Sri Lankan government has prepared a document that is reportedly being circulated among the diplomatic community in Geneva noting the legal and procedural implications of the United States sponsored resolution on Sri Lanka.
Media reports from Geneva state that Sri Lanka has informed developing countries about the legal and procedural implications in the resolution that s to be taken up at the Unite Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) sessions and that it sets a bad precedent.
The Sri Lankan government has noted that the resolution converted the Council into a tribunal while undermining the sovereignty and domestic mechanisms for judicial redress and has defeated Sri Lanka's move towards reconciliation.
"Sri Lanka needs to move forward to a pluralistic society, in which all citizens can live together in harmony, equality, dignity, justice, self-respect and interdependent prosperity. In purporting to deal with reconciliation in a manner that satisfies external perspectives rather than those of Sri Lankan citizens, this resolution will only benefit disruptive forces and prevent us from achieving the goals we share," the document stated.
It says that instead of reconciliation the resolution will lead to the polarization of the different communities in the country.
The polarization has been evident even before the resolution is taken up for voting in the Council as the Sinhala and Muslim parties protest against the resolution while the major Tamil party calling the UNHRC members to support it.
The division was even noticeable in the Catholic Church when the Archbishop of Colombo Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith denounced the resolution as an "undue meddling in the sovereignty and integrity of Sri Lanka," while 31 Tamil Catholic priests from the North including the Bishop of Mannar Rayappu Joseph urged the UNHRC to launch an international investigation to address the accountability issues that they say LLRC did not address in its report.
Although various reports have been highlighted, the resolution is likely to be taken up for a vote on Thursday (22).
Sri Lanka suffered a blow in its defense against the UN resolution when its ally India said Monday that it is likely to support the US backed resolution.
The resolution submitted by the US calls for the government to expeditiously implement the recommendations made by the domestic body Lessons Learned and reconciliation Commission (LLRC) appointed by the President to probe the war and to investigate the war crime allegations against the Sri Lankan military during the war that ended in May 2009.
Following is the full text of the document prepared by the Sri Lankan government:
Note on legal and procedural implications
US Draft Resolution:
Promoting Reconciliation and Accountability in Sri Lanka (3/6/12)
Item 2 - Annual report of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
1) This Resolution will lead to the Council for the first time addressing past issues, and thus taking on the character of a tribunal that will exceed its mandate.
2) This undermines a decision taken by the Council in 2009, and is doubly intrusive because there has only been change for the better since that decision.
Sri Lanka circulates document in Geneva noting legal and procedural implications of the UN resolution
......continued.....
3) The Council mandate provides for resolutions to address specific country issues through the UPR or through special sessions in cases of emergency. The alternative is under Item 4; when circumstances have arisen that require special attention, because there are current instances of gross and systematic violations.
4) Reopening issues decided upon in the past is unwarranted and presents a clear risk of developing countries, in particular, being targeted for collateral reasons.
5) The resolution undermines the cardinal principle and well entrenched rule of international law that demands the exhaustion of domestic remedies. Suspicion and criticism of domestic remedies undermines also the judicial process in democratic countries, and introduces a political dimension that attacks the independence of the judiciary.
6) Through this Resolution, the HRC is asked to reach conclusions on a report that of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC)], which has not been placed before this Council for deliberation. This precedent will encourage the Council to take cognizance of any writing in any document placed before the Council.
7) The resolution judges the intentions of an elected government, and proposes actions that arise from unwarranted hypotheses. These hypotheses are of a piece with the condign criticism from countries advancing this resolution when the LLRC was appointed.
8) The effort to impose technical assistance and advice from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is contrary to the principle that these should be based on consent.
9) The conflation of these with Special Procedures and the requirement of a sovereign government to mandatorily accept such advice are totally contrary to the principle of sovereignty, and have no precedent.
10) The lack of specificity as to the budgetary arrangements envisaged by the draft Resolution gives rise to potentially serious concerns about the transparency and accountability of funding sources of OHCHR and Special Procedures in fulfilling the requirements of the resolution. If recourse is had to largely opaque funding sources, developing countries must register their concern about donor driven programmes not subject to scrutiny and monitoring by any inter-governmental body.
11) The resolution subverts the principle of cooperation that has been institutionalized through the UPR procedure. The system of discussion and debate that the UPR has nourished will be undermined by this innovation. In particular, given the pledges made by Sri Lanka at the first UPR cycle, which will be reviewed in a few months, it is gratuitously inappropriate to introduce a fresh mechanism now which anticipates the evaluation due in a few months.
12) The justifications advanced for this resolution, which refer to intervention where States have failed, opens the floodgates for subjective assessments in a context of increasingly judgmental indices that are celebrated in the popular media with no reference to objective criteria or the funding sources of such information.
13) Whilst it is claimed that this resolution will promote reconciliation, it will only contribute to polarization in a society that has begun to come together through the various reconciliation initiatives that have commenced.
14) Sri Lanka needs to move forward to a pluralistic society, in which all citizens can live together in harmony, equality, dignity, justice, self-respect and inter-dependent prosperity. In purporting to deal with reconciliation in a manner that satisfies external perspectives rather than those of Sri Lankan citizens, this resolution will only benefit disruptive forces and prevent us from achieving the goals we share.
India should FOLLOW ITS OWN ADVICE TO Sri Lanka, and let these Maoist terrorists "have a future based on equality, dignity, justice and respect" as President Man Mohan Singh piously pontificated to Sri Lanka!
Therefore, we recommend DEVOLUTION OF POWER to the Maoist terrorists, granting them FULL AUTONOMY within the Indian Union, to exercise arbitrary control of their own fiefdoms as they see fit, just as India commends to Sri Lanka.
Let us see whether the Indians can swallow their own bitter medicine, and elevate murderous terrorists to the status of "freedom fighters" fighting against the Local & Federal governments freely elected by the citizens of India!
We'll see that only when hell boils over!
..............
India kidnapping: Maoists say two Italians are safe
BBC.com
March 20, 2012
Maoist rebels in eastern India have said two Italians they kidnapped last week are safe and in good condition.
The rebels have named mediators to hold talks over the Italians' release.
Paulo Bosusco, 54, and Claudio Colangelo, 61, were seized while trekking in a tribal area of Orissa state, one of several regions of India where Maoist rebels are active.
The rebels have demanded an end to military operations against them and the release of jailed Maoists.
A deadline of Sunday for their list of 13 demands to be met was extended to late Tuesday.
The Maoists said they would not engage in violence until then and Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said security forces would halt operations against the rebels during talks.
Restricted area
"The Italians are fine and being properly looked after, they are getting good food," rebel leader Sabyasachi Panda said in a recording sent to journalists.
"They have no problem at all," he said.
In an earlier recording, Mr Panda proposed that senior Maoist leader Narayan Sanyal and rights activists Bishwapriya Kanungo and Dandapani Mohanty be the mediators holding talks with the state government.
Mr Sanyal is currently in prison in neighbouring Jharkhand and would need to be released to lead negotiations, as the rebels have proposed.
Asked what would happen if the government did not agree to Mr Sanyal's participation, Mr Panda said talks would then be "doomed".
map Main states where Maoist groups operate
This is the first time Westerners have been kidnapped in Orissa state by Maoists.
A Maoist spokesman accused the pair of photographing bathing women.
The Orissa government recently imposed severe restrictions on the movement of tourists inside areas inhabited by tribes people.
Mr Bosusco ran an adventure tourism agency in Orissa while Mr Colangelo was visiting from Italy.
Italian Consul General Joel Melchiori has told the BBC he was working with Orissa officials to find a solution.
The abduction comes at a time of strained relations between Italy and India.
They have been involved in a diplomatic dispute since Indian police arrested two Italian marines a month ago in the southern port of Kochi. The pair are accused of killing two Indian fishermen.
The Maoists have a strong presence in many eastern states, and have been described by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the country's biggest security threat.
In his first remarks on the kidnapping, he said "the abduction of two foreign national recently is a reminder of the challenge to our internal security by Naxal [Maoist] and left-wing extremism."
The rebels say they are fighting for a communist state and for the rights of tribal people and the rural poor.
My Comment at LankaWeb.com:
Ananda-USA Says:
March 22nd, 2012 at 6:48 pm
CORDIAL ties with the USA & India to remain INTACT?
You have GOT TO BE KIDDING! The USA is reigniting terrorism in Sri Lanka by giving oxygen to the separatists, and India, which initiated, funded and fostered Tamil terrorism in Sri Lanka, just STABBED US IN THE BACK … AGAIN … in Geneva!
And we are to “maintain cordial ties” as if nothing happened? BLOODY NONSENSE!
Instead, Sri Lanka should batten down the hatches, man the guns on the ramparts, gird up our loins, and prepare to OVERCOME TOUGH TIMES AHEAD without handing over our sovereignty to the VERY PEOPLE who are the source of our difficulties.
If we do that, the next steps taken by these VERY SAME ENEMIES will create SEVERE ECONOMIC HARDSHIP for Sri Lanka. We must prepare to face that just as our ancestors faced 400 years of European Colonialists. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO PROTECT & PRESERVE our FREEDOM and the INTEGRITY of our Motherland.
Here are a few things we should do in the years ahead:
1. REDUCE interactions and ties to the USA, including limiting DIPLOMATIC REPRESENTATION to only the US Embassy in Colombo, and the USEF. Reject USAID, and SHUT DOWN all Peace corps, “democracy building” and “human rights” assistance staffed by US and Local personnel. ALL of these latter activities are used to undermine and destabilize the nation. We no longer trust them.
2. REDUCE Indian DIPLOMATIC PRESENCE to the Indian Embassy in Colombo. Reject Indian assistance for Rehabilitation & Reconstruction of the North & East. Discourage Indian companies from doing business in Sri Lanka, and prohibit businesses incorporated in TamilNadu from doing ANY business in Sri Lanka. Redirect all purchases of Indian goods towards purchases from other nations that supported Sri Lanka at the UN.
3. Examine the activities of all international and local NGOs for destabilizing activities inimical to the preservation of peace and national security in Sri Lanka, including fake democracy building and fake human rights activities, missionary religious conversions, underhand promotion of separatism, and aid and assistance to specific communities based on communal considerations such as ethnicity, religion, language, and caste. Kick them all out of Sri Lanka!
4. Delete the 13th Amendment from Sri Lanka’s CONSTITUTION. That was ILLEGALLY imposed on Sri Lanka by India, under the threat of FORCE. Instead adopt a policy of Ethnic Integration as the central aspect of a broader policy of National Integration, passing the necessary laws to HOMOGENIZE the DEMOGRAPHY of Sri Lanka to ELIMINATE ETHNIC CONCENTRATIONS within Sri Lanka. Declare that Sri Lanka’s policy is NOT TO DEVOLVE ANY POWER on the basis of COMMUNAL ATTRIBUTES (race, religion, language, caste, sex) to ANY COMMUNITY that is not available EQUALLY tp ALL CITIZENS.
..........continued........
5. Dissolve Provincial Councils as a burdensome layer of unnecessary bureaucracy that creates sub-national regional entities that weaken the central government, threaten its control over national security, and raise barriers to national infrastructure development for the benefit of all citizens of Sri Lanka. Adopt DISTRICTS as the largest administrative units, and place them under direct control of the central government. Empower Members of Parliament, reporting to the central government, to represent local interests and to secure government assistance for their constituencies. Currently, MPs are underutilized but useless elected officials paid by the governments but having few responsibilities or adequate authority to work for the benefit of their constituents. Let us make better use of these people ELECTED by the people.
6. Increase DIPLOMATIC representation and commerce with other non-Western nations of the world, to develop symbiotic relationships to exchange resources, share technologies, help each other in security matters, and prevent victimization by Neocolonialists powers manipulating the United Nations.
7. Sri Lanka should examine its resource needs, and move to become self-sufficient in as many areas as possible. Let us strive to become self-sufficient in food, medicines, clothing, building materials, and energy. Energy for electricity generation and transportation, in particular, should be given special attention … for the price of oil and gas is likely to sky rocket in the future due to rising demand from developing economies, and wars created by Neocolonialists to capture these resources for their exclusive use. Import taxes should be ELIMINATED on ALL-ELECTRIC and HYBRID PLUG-IN ELECTRIC cars to drive Sri Lanka car and truck fleets away from imported fossil fuel use. Massive subsidies and low cost loans should be given for renewable electricity generation with Photovoltaic panels and wind turbines, for residential and commercial installations. Homeowners should be encouraged to not only generate electricity to meet their own needs with roof-top solar panels, but also to cover every inch of their roofs with additional PV-panels to sell to the CEB at the average price they would pay the CEB for electricity. The latter alone has the potential to make Sri Lanka independent in energy for both residential use and automobile transportation. To meet the needs of the local market, Sri Lanka should develop solar panel manufacturing and small-wind turbine manufacturing facilities with the help of the Chinese Government. This will jump start a flowering of technology that help meet Sri Lanka’s needs as well as contribute to exports to foreign markets.
8. Under no circumstances should Sri Lanka allow foreign powers to dictate what it should do to Rehabilitate and reconstruct war affected zones of Sri Lanka, or to allow them access on the ground ton any part of Sri Lanka to “supervise” or “direct” any of these activities. They have CLEARLY DEMONSTRATED their ILL-WILL TOWARDS our Motherland, despite all that we have done to uplift ALL of our people, endure as Asia’s oldest functioning democracy with universal franchise, and rescue our people from the jaws of death by defeating a murderous terrorist movement that survived through the support it received from these same foreign powers.
GIVE NO ACCESS TO THESE FOREIGN ENEMIES WITHIN Sri Lanka …. NONE WHATEVER! Our Survival Depends Upon It!
My Comment at LankaWeb.com:
Ananda-USA Says:
March 22nd, 2012 at 10:20 pm
Dham,
The short answer is that you charge the batteries using the rooftop Photo voltaic solar panel generated electricity.
Here is how it works. The PV-panels generate electricity from the incident solar radiation. The generated electricity can be used to charge a bank of batteries inside the building using a battery charger, and the stored DC electricity can be converted to AC using a stand-alone non-grid-tied inverter. But, such battery banks are expensive. A much cheaper and convenient method is to convert the generated electricity from DC to AC using a “Grid-Tied” inverter and to feed the AC electricity directly to the CEB AC grid (at 230VAC, 50Hz in Sri Lanka and 240VAC, 60Hz in the USA), in-effect using using CEB grid as a VIRTUAL ELECTRICITY STORAGE BATTERY
This connection to the grid is made at the CEB-installed “utility service panel” available in each house. That utility service panel has an electricity KWh energy meter. If that energy meter is a “Net Energy Metering” meter, it can measure energy flow in both directions: from the electricity grid to the building and from the building to the grid. The Net energy meter measures the difference between the energy the building consumes from the grid, and the energy the PV systems generates and feeds to the grid. If the meter is not a Net Energy Meter, CEB will swap what you have for a net energy meter. At the end of every month, you will receive a bill from the CEB asking you to pay for any net energy consumed. If you have installed a large PV-array that produces more energy than you consume, then you will be credited with that amount of energy, and will be paid money by the CEB according to some Rs/kWh rate set by the CEB. A middle-class home in Sri Lanka will only need about 2kW of solar panels to zero-out its electricity bill. That is, you will need to install about eight 240Watt PV-panels on your roof, a DC to AC “grid-tie” inverter, a PV-fuse box, and an AC disconnect switch.
I am not just talking through my hat: I have over 3 decades of experience in energy systems and defense R&D, and in particular, Renewable Energy. Perhaps more relevantly, I have made a very large investment in a rooftop PV installation on my own home, designing, permitting, purchasing, installing, and wiring it … all by myself … from scratch. I am now not only energy self-sufficient, but I am earning an income from my rooftop! Let me explain further, for the benefit of all Sri Lankan patriots.
After waiting for many years until PV-panel prices came down, I finally plunged-in with both feet and installed 12kW of PV-panels on the roof of my home. This is about 3 or 4 times the amount of PV capacity I need to meet the electricity consumption of my home, which I had reduced to a bare minimum with various energy efficiency strategies for lighting, heating, air-conditioning, cooking and heating bath water.
.....continued.....
One-third (1/3) of my PV array now produces sufficient energy to meet all the needs of my residence. This year, I plan to sell my two Toyota SUVs and buy one all-electric Nissan Leaf car with an all electric range of 125 miles, and a hybrid plug-in Chevrolet Volt with an all-electric range of 35 miles and a gasoline range of an additional 250 miles. I will be able to charge BOTH vehicles using an additional 1/3 of my PV-array capacity. I have already installed a 240VAC GE Wattstation EV charger in my garage to do this. The energy generated by the last 1/3 of the PV-array will be sold Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), which is my electricity company, for about one half the minimum rate I pay for the electricity I buy from PG&E. Because I did all of the installation work myself, bought the best performing equipment at the best price, and did not charge myself a profit (!), my cost was 1/3 of the cost quoted by several reputable vendors. As a result, the payoff period of this investment, accounting for the electricity cost savings and tax benefits, was reduced from about 10 years to about 3 1/2 years. The rate of return on my investment over the 30-year lifetime of the array is about 15%/year excluding accelerated inflation of energy prices.
The California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) is now negotiating with PG&E to increase the rate they pay to homeowners. PG&E has to pay a penalty for particulate gas emissions into the air in their natural-gas fired power plants, and has an incentive to reduce that penalty by utilizing PV-electricity fed into the grid by homeowners. Also, California law requires 30% of PG&E’s (and of other power producers) energy to be from non-polluting renewable energy sources by 2025; but currently only 5% is from renewable sources. Therefore, PG&E is in the difficult position of not being able to satisfy the law and avoid expensive financial penalties. I fully expect the PUC to increase the payments PG&E must make to homeowners to a much higher rate to jump start PV-installations. If that happens, there will be sufficient incentive (in addition to the current 30% federal tax credit, and $0.35/Watt CA state tax rebate incentives) for homeowners to invest in rooftop solar. If the payment rate increases, and gasoline prices continue to zoom upwards, I expect rooftop PV-arrays to become the norm in the US.
Sri Lanka should adopt EVEN MORE AGGRESSIVE strategies than the US to become independent of fossil fuels by replacing them with renewable energies, given that we lack the financial strength to enter into large long-term oil purchase contracts like the US from countries (like Saudi Arabia) that rely on the US for their defence, and because the Western Powers are making it difficult for small nations like Sri Lanka to continue to buy oil at a discount from friendly nations like Iran.
WE MUST MOVE TOWARDS PRODUCING ENERGY FROM INDIGENOUS RENEWABLE SOURCES; it is NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE for Sri Lanka.
Resolution on Sri Lanka adopted at the UNHRC with the votes of 24 countries
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 22, Geneva: The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Thursday adopted a contested resolution sponsored by the United States with 24 votes in favor, 15 against and eight abstentions.
Adopting the resolution the 47-member UNHRC called for Sri Lanka to credibly investigate the allegations of violations of international humanitarian laws committed by Sri Lanka during its armed conflict with Tamil Tiger terrorists.
Tabling the resolution, the United States said for the past three years after the end of the war in May 2009, Sri Lanka had been given time and space to develop its own roadmap for lasting national reconciliation and accountability.
The US looked forward to the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) and expected Sri Lanka to develop its own action plan to implement its recommendations, Ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe told the Council.
"Given the lack of action to implement the recommendations of the Sri Lankan government's own LLRC, and the need for additional steps to address accountability issues not covered in the LLRC report, it is appropriate that the UNHRC consider and adopt this moderate and balanced resolution."
The revised resolution notes "with concern that the report does not adequately address serious allegations of violations of international law," and calls upon the sri Lankan government "to implement the constructive recommendations" made in the LLRC report and to "take all necessary additional steps to fulfill its relevant legal obligations and commitment to initiate credible and independent actions."
It requests the government to present, as expeditiously as possible, "a comprehensive action plan detailing the steps that the Government has taken and will take to implement the recommendations and also to address alleged violations of international law.
The resolution encourages the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and "relevant special procedures mandate holders to provide, in consultation with, and with the concurrence of, and the Government of Sri Lanka to accept, advice and technical assistance on implementing," the measures.
The US revised the third item to include the Sri Lankan government's agreement for the UN body to involve in the process.
Sri Lanka President's special human rights envoy Mahinda Samarasinghe speaking at the UNHRC session called the Council taken an objective view of the Sri Lanka situation grant the necessary latitude to complete the reconciliation process that has already begun.
"This resolution if adopted will not add value to the implementation process in Sri Lanka; on the contrary it may well be counterproductive and, as such, those who have been using extreme pressure tactics in garnering support for this ill-timed and unwarranted initiative should be mindful of the responsibility that accompanies it," Samarasinghe warned the Council.
Resolution on Sri Lanka adopted at the UNHRC with the votes of 24 countries
....continued.....
The US emphasized that the resolution is "intended to help the people of Sri Lanka achieve a lasting and equitable peace that is marked by equality, dignity, justice and self-respect.
Sri Lanka President's special human rights envoy Mahinda Samarasinghe speaking at the UNHRC session called the Council taken an objective view of the Sri Lanka situation grant the necessary latitude to complete the reconciliation process that has already begun.
"This resolution if adopted will not add value to the implementation process in Sri Lanka; on the contrary it may well be counterproductive and, as such, those who have been using extreme pressure tactics in garnering support for this ill-timed and unwarranted initiative should be mindful of the responsibility that accompanies it," Samarasinghe warned the Council.
Sri Lanka, China, Uganda, Indonesia, Maldives, Bangladesh, Cuba, Congo, Ecuador, Kuwait, Mauritania, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand voted against the resolution.
Angola, Burkina Faso, Botswana, Djibouti, Jordan, Malaysia, Kyrgyzstan, and Senegal abstained from voting.
United States, Mexico, India, Nigeria, Austria, Belgium, Benin, Cameroon, Chile, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Guatemala, Hungary, Italy, Libya, Mauritius, Norway, Peru, Poland, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Uruguay voted in favor of the resolution.
What They Said: India’s UNHRC Vote Against Sri Lanka
Wall Street Journal - India
March 23, 2012
A United Nations human-rights body adopted a United States-sponsored resolution Thursday seeking to investigate alleged human rights abuses by Sri Lankan forces during its 26-year civil war. Of the 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council, 24 nations backed the resolution (including India), 15 rejected the proposal and eight abstained from voting.
India’s support of the resolution has ignited widespread debate at home over the country’s traditional foreign policy of “non-alignment.” The move also has shown a spotlight on domestic political conflicts which reportedly triggered the country’s diplomatic stance.
Some newspapers praised India’s stand on the resolution while others slammed it as a grave error, alleging that the move would sour diplomatic ties between the two nations.
Here is a roundup of what Indian newspapers said on the issue:
“India lets down a friend,” read a Friday editorial in The Pioneer. Arguing that “India has committed one of its worst foreign policy blunders,” the piece slammed the government’s decision as “shameful,” “flawed” and “balderdash.”
Alleging that Thursday’s vote “marks a sharp departure” from the country’s long-standing principle of non-alignment, by which New Delhi refrains from sticking its nose in other countries’ business, the piece went on to say that India’s diplomatic stance would “sour bilateral relations and push Colombo closer towards Beijing.”
Mr. Singh’s decision has “nothing to do with the alleged plight of Sri Lankan Tamils,” the editorial claimed, adding that his judgment was “entirely dictated” by Congress’s ally, the DMK, a Indian Tamil party. India’s vote “has shocked the overwhelming majority of Indians who believe the pursuit of national interest should shape the contours of our foreign policy,” the piece further asserted.
“We must now live with the shame of not only letting down a friend but also supping with its enemies. For that, only Mr. Singh can be blamed,” the editorial concluded.
Headlined “A wake up call for Colombo,” a Friday editorial in The Hindu argued that the resolution was self-inflicted by Sri Lankan President Mahindra Rajapaksa’s government.
“Thursday’s resolution is the first real sign that the world will no more let itself be guided solely by Sri Lankan claims….. It also means that gentle prodding and quiet diplomacy will not be the main means the world will adopt,” the piece noted.
Highlighting that India’s vote had “aroused consternation” in Colombo, the piece argued that it was critical for India to ensure that “its intentions [are not] misread.”
“There is no change in the Indian defence of the unity and integrity of its southern neighbor, only a realization that the tardy progress towards reconciliation could undermine the prospects for peace and stability,” the editorial read.
The piece further highlighted that “for the first time in decades, New Delhi is in concord with popular sentiments in Tamil Nadu,” the southern Indian state whose politicians had called for New Delhi to support the motion. However, the newspaper argued that India’s diplomatic stand cannot be seen “as merely the product of domestic pressure” but also a sign that Delhi is tired of Sri Lanka’s failures to keep its promises on reconciliation with its Tamil minority.
What They Said: India’s UNHRC Vote Against Sri Lanka
.....continued....
An editorial in the Hindustan Times debated India’s varying stance on the U.S.-sponsored resolution.
“India’s response to the resolution vote – suspicion, mild support, prevarication and then final support – reflects its own divided role,” the piece argued. The editorial further weighed in on the complexities involved in India’s flip-flopping position. “On the one hand [India] has traditionally been wary of international intervention,” while on the other “it is under the pressure of expectations to promote liberalism,” it noted.
Nevertheless “it would have been more effective if India had declared its support for the resolution before the protests of the Tamil parliamentarians,” the piece concluded.
The Sri Lankan media, however, took a tough stance. In an editorial, Sri Lanka’s state-run Daily News responded acidly to the U.N. adopted resolution.
Claiming that the Sri Lankan government “has left no stone unturned” to reconstruct and rejuvenate the country, it alleged that those in favor of the resolution were “in a desperate attempt to disempower and undermine Sri Lanka… trying every trick in the bag to further this dark design.”
The piece, however, cautioned that “lapsing into despondency would prove fatal for the country,” adding that the state’s administration should instead focus on winning “more and more allies” to progressively strengthen international cooperation.
“The organizations and pressure groups of the developing world must be revived and energized to meet the challenges facing us… Now more than ever before, national unity must be strengthened and sustained,” the piece asserted.
“The US and its friends should be ashamed that they, in spite of their combined might, could muster only 24 votes,” read a Friday editorial in The Island.
Sri Lanka “bravely fought the mastiffs of neo-imperialism, savage in the fray, and went down fighting,” the piece read. Therefore, “it certainly was a defeat as good as victory!” it added.
Criticizing the U.S. for its “anti-Sri Lankan propaganda blitzkrieg,” the editorial went on to label India as “a loser in Geneva.” Noting that India’s decision came after increased political pressure from its own Tamil parties, the piece alleged that though the “U.S. succeeded in carrying India in Geneva, India failed to carry Asia, or at least South Asia with it.” (Bangladesh voted against the motion, for instance.)
“In other words, Sri Lanka has won against India in Asia!” the piece claimed.
Ananda-USA Says:
March 23rd, 2012 at 6:54 am
The Western Neo-Colonialists want to drive Sri Lanka into becoming a lawless Somalia, ravaged by internal dissension, that they can manipulate at will to fit their agenda; but they UNDERESTIMATE the will and determination of our PEOPLE, sustained by the HISTORICAL STRENGTHS of our Resplendent Land.
Thirty years of foreign sponsored terrorism failed to break us, as did the previous 400 years of unrelenting attacks upon our ancestors by colonialist vultures. This puppet show at the United Nations will not break us, nor discourage and divert us from the path of progress, of economic growth and national integration that we are now embarked upon.
We will not YIELD, nor will we BEND. We will FIGHT ON regardless, to SEIZE our rightful place in this world under the glorious sun, FIRM in our beliefs of RIGHT and WRONG, with JUSTICE and COMPASSION in our hearts towards ALL of our citizens, protecting and nurturing them, until we reach that shining light together, that new beginning in our nation’s hallowed history: the transformation of our beloved Motherland into the New Wonder of Asia.
We will not fail, come what may!
My Comment at LankaWeb.com:
Ananda-USA Says:
March 23rd, 2012 at 5:58 pm
Dham,
A few more comments in reply to your question about how to charge batteries in electric vehicles:
As all of us have come to realize, there are very few advantages in being a very small country in this world, but among them is that the distances that we need to travel in our daily lives are much smaller in Sri Lanka than, for example, the United States.
The current Nissan Leaf all electric car with a battery powered range of 125 miles causes "range anxiety" among potential buyers in the US who fear being stranded with a run down battery. But, in Sri Lanka, 125 miles is perfectly adequate for most people to get to their destination that has a power outlet to recharge the car. The Nissan Leaf has a 24 kWh battery that needs 8hrs to charge at a 240 VAC outlet. It consumes 32 kWh costing about $3.76 to travel 100 miles for an electrical gas consumption equivalent mpg-e of 106 at an assumed US electricity cost of $0.11/kWh.
If PV-electricity from one's own rooftop is used, the cost of recharging is essentially the cost of the PV-installation expressed in Rs/KWh. If however, one does not have one's own rooftop PV-system, the cost is the Rs/Kwh rate set by the CEB, which I believe is about 18 Rs/kWh ... higher than my minimum rate, but less than my average cost of electricity in California. PV-electricity is very much cheaper than the electricity I can buy from PG&E.
For those people, for whom a range of 125 miles between recharges is insufficient to quell their fear of being stranded on the road there is the Chevrolet Volt with 35 miles battery-powered all-electric range (at 93 mpg-e) and 250 miles gasoline powered range at 37 mpg. It has a 16kWh battery limited to 10.4 kWh of maximum drawdown before it switches over to electricity generated by the gasoline engine genset. The Volt would cost $3.96 to travel 100 miles if you used only battery power (recharging at least 3 times along the way) and cost $10.88 if you used only the gasoline engine to cover those 100 miles.
In comparison, the technologically fabulous Toyota Prius gasoline-electric non-plug-in hybrid (with a battery capacity of about 1.8kWh of which only about 50% is used) has an overall mpg of 50 and costs $7.76 to travel the same distance of 100 miles at an assumed US premium gasoline cost of $4.01/gal. Note that on an energy content basis 1 gallon of premium gasoline is equivalent to 33.7 kWh of electric energy. The latest 2012 Plug-in version of the Toyota Prius is now available in California. It is reputed to have a 5.2kWh battery delivering an all-electric range of only 12.5 miles before it switches over to operation as a standard gas-electric hybrid.
For many people making mostly short commutes, like me, the 35 miles range of the Volt will eliminate 85-90% of my gasoline purchases, while allowing use of the same vehicle for longer trips without any limit on the travel distance, because you can refuel at a gas station. You can also recharge your battery if there is a power outlet at some point along the way.
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In California, electric vehicle charging stations, some free and others with ATMs allowing payment by credit card, are being installed by local governments, by gas stations, and by private companies for use by their employees. Unless these are very high voltage (440+ volts) chargers, most chargers that operate at 240VAC require at least 2-4 hours, perhaps more, to charge an electric car. That excessive charging time imposes an unacceptable limitation on commuters who are used to a 10 minute fill up at a gas station. However, it is a practical option for those who can leave the car on charge while they work, or are doing something else like eating at a restaurant. For most people, overnight charging at home using low-cost overnight rate electricity is the best cost-effective solution.
There are, however, new developments in battery technology that promise to deliver both higher energy densities (read much smaller batteries) and much faster charging times allowing rapid turn around time. These innovations will completely transform the EV scene within the next five years!
Sri Lanka can leverage these developments in electric vehicles, rooftop solar systems, and charging stations installed at businesses and highways to free the country from the scourge of unmanageable increases in imported fuel costs. It only requires the WILL & the VISION to transfer money otherwise wasted on recurring fuel imports into an enduring solution based on indigeously produced renewable energy. TECHNOLOGY is not a BARRIER; it is ALREADY HERE!
Sri Lanka warns US resolution against country sets a negative precedent at the UNHRC
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 24, Geneva: The United States sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka adopted at the United Nations Human Rights Council on Thursday (March 22) sets a negative precedent that challenges the core values of the UN body, Ambassador Tamara Kunanayakam said.
The Ambassador addressing the Council at the conclusion of the 19th session of UNHRC on Friday said the resolution "reflects a blatant case of politicization that takes the Council hostage to the hidden agendas of the mighty."
The resolution tabled by the US calling for the speedy implementation of the recommendations made by Sri Lanka's domestic Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) and the investigation of the allegations of international humanitarian law violations received 24 votes in the 47-member Council. Including Sri Lanka, 15 members voted against the resolution while eight abstained.
Ambassador Kunanayakam noted that the pressures exercised and the methods used to obtain support for a resolution whose list of co-sponsors, according to her, "constitutes a caricature of a divided world" were not unknown to the members of the Council.
"We reject all forms of unilateralism, threats, sanctions, blockades, conditionalities, and the orchestrated disinformation campaign whose aim is to diabolise Sri Lanka, but which only brings dishonour to its authors," the Ambassador said in her concluding remarks.
"Today, one country deems itself the depositary of a mission to dictate to the rest of world its vision of Democracy, of Human Rights, of Development. Is any of us safe from becoming the next target, the object of pressure, even of military aggression, to the detriment of our peoples and their right to life?" the Ambassador asked referring to the heavy hand played by the United States to get its resolution adopted by the Council.
The envoy emphasized that it is Sri Lanka's duty to unite in the common struggle to "defend our sovereignty, our independence, our territorial integrity, and the free choice of our peoples to shape their own societies and their destiny."
"Humanity has entered a new period in which the very survival of the values we cherish and uphold is at stake. To rise to these challenges is our responsibility, a necessity, and no longer an option!" she noted.
The Ambassador assured the international community that Sri Lanka will continue its policy of peace and reconciliation, which, she said, is an inclusive process that enjoys not only the support of its own people, but broad international support.
She also asserted that Sri Lanka will continue to defend the independence and the prerogatives of the Human Rights Council, against any effort to undermine its multilateral principles.
Bravo! Sri Lanka is moving towards self-sufficiency in FOOD.
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Sri Lanka self-sufficient in grains and pulses, plans to stop imports
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 25, Colombo: Sri Lanka has been able to produce sufficient quantities of grains and pulses to meet the country's requirement and is considering to stop the imports of the other alternative food items.
The Ministry of Agriculture says Sri Lanka produces maize, green gram, black gram, pulses and other alternative food items locally to cover the country's requirements.
The Treasury has therefore instructed the government not to import these items as the country can meet its own requirements, state-run radio SLBC reported.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Sri Lanka produces 220,000 metric tons (MT) of maize per year while the need is 228,000 metric tons. The Ministry believes the balance quantity could also be produced locally.
The country's need for green grams is 24,000 MT per year and production is at about 26,000 MT per year. The requirement of black gram amounts to 12,000 MT while the production at present is around 15,000 MT.
A major portion of these alternative food items comes from the North, the Ministry says. The Ministry says it expect to further increase the production of the items and has taken several measures in that regard.
India lets down a friend: Manmohan Singh commits foreign policy blunder
DailyPioneer.com
March 25, 2012
With Prime Minister Manmohan Singh deciding to place his interests as also those of the Congress above our national interest, India has committed one of its worst foreign policy blunders by voting for the US/EU-sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka at the United Nations Human Rights Council. Thursday’s vote marks a sharp departure from India’s long-standing principle of not voting in favour of country-specific resolutions at the UNHRC. On March 1, India abstained from voting on a resolution targeting Syria, a country in which we have little or no stake and where recent developments have been far less than happy.
Yet, Mr Singh decided to vote in favour of the anti-Sri Lanka resolution, ignoring the twin facts that this would further sour bilateral relations and push Colombo closer towards Beijing. His decision to break with past practice and deliver a body blow to New Delhi’s already shaky relations with Colombo have nothing to do with the alleged ‘plight’ of Sri Lankan Tamils. It’s a decision that has been entirely dictated by what he lamely describes as “coalition compulsion” — the DMK, which keeps the Congress in power and Mr Manmohan Singh in office, blackmailed him into voting for the resolution. In a sense, what was witnessed on Thursday was not India but Mr Singh voting against Sri Lanka: This is a vote that has shocked the overwhelming majority of Indians who believe the pursuit of national interest should shape the contours of our foreign policy; barring Tamil chauvinists and their political patrons, few, if any, including in Tamil Nadu, would want to associate themselves with Mr Singh’s shameful deed of abandoning Sri Lanka when that country needed us the most.
The US, of course, would be gladdened by Mr Singh’s flawed decision, not the least because it diminishes, though not for the first time ever since this Government came to office, the primacy of India’s national interest. Nothing would delight the US more than an isolated, friendless India which is despised, if not hated, by its neighbours. The Americans have succeeded in achieving that collateral objective through this resolution; Mr Singh is complicit in ensuring that success.
Strangely, Mr Singh claims that his decision to vote against Sri Lanka is aimed at helping Sri Lankan Tamils “get justice”. That’s balderdash. It’s a non-binding resolution which Sri Lanka will be entirely justified in spurning with the contempt it deserves. If the US and its EU allies decide to take the issue to the UN Security Council, that move will be blocked by China and Russia — both countries have wisely voted against the resolution at UNHRC, placing their own interests above those of Western countries which are desperately seeking relevance in international affairs.
Sri Lanka has rightly described the passage of the resolution as a move which will not foster reconciliation between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils but only serve to further polarise communities. That’s precisely what busybodies in the West want — to disturb the peace that has prevailed ever since the LTTE was decimated by Sri Lanka’s military, and then fish in the troubled waters. India should have tried its best to prevent that goal from being achieved. Instead, we must now live with the shame of not only letting down a friend but also supping with its enemies. For that, only Mr Singh can be blamed.
You bet it is "calculated" to hurt. And it has indeed hurt.
We will not forget the lesson.
However, Sri Lanka's enemies will NOT PROFIT FROM IT!
Instead, they will LOSE form it.
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India's UN Vote Against Lanka Calculated: Top Official
OutlookIndia.com
March 26, 2012
Calling it as "calculated vote," a top official today defended India's vote to the resolution in the recent United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) session in Geneva on Sri Lanka and said that the Island Republic has "not done enough" and was "not doing what it promised to."
"..We believe that country (Sri Lanka) although has won the war, is losing the peace..Definitely in the long term, because they have not done enough. Or they are not doing what they promised to. Definitely, our voice was in that direction," Lt Gen (retd) Prakash Menon, Military Advisor to National Security Council Secretariat said while addressing a seminar here.
"Of course, you can say that the Central government was influenced by coalition politics. But, in the end its all about national interest. It was a calculated vote. It is not something we have done off the card," he said.
Brushing aside critics that China was going to leverage in Sri Lanka, Menon said, "All our neighbours play this game with us. Nepal plays, Bangladesh plays, Sri Lanka plays. But we must understand that is natural for small countries to deal with a bigger neighbour like this. But it does not mean that Sri Lanka can forget its geography. So we know where we stand and what we are voted upon is a value-based vote."
Calling upon people to believe in themselves as a strong country, he said, "When we say that China is actually becoming powerful militarily, then the strategic question to ask is, 'So what?' The answer to that question would obviously have a whole lot of meanings," he said, delivering a lecture at a national seminar on 'Challenges to India's Security in 21th Century.'
"We don't want to be told how to deal with China, because we know that both are very old civilizations. We know that we have differences. But we also know that we are mature enough to deal with them", Menon said.
Observing that India believed in partnerships, he said, "India will partner China on climate issues on trade. It is partner with the US on nuclear proliferation . So the context will decide India's partnerships."
There was a difference between India's nuclear weapons against others, he said, "People don't look at the way they look at Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Why is this so? Because ownership of nuclear weapons matters. Who owns it? When Pakistan has nuclear weapons and North Korea has nuclear weapons, it is completely different from when India has nuclear weapons."
Pointing out that human capital that services the national security system was definitely in need of a significant improvement, he said, "If you look at the Ministry of Defence or Ministry Home Affairs or the organisation in which I am, you will find that the human capital which populates those structures are mostly Generals. They are people who hold a five-year term, initially learn on the job. I do not think it is possible to run an effective system with this."
Since the TNA (with the UNP's support) is boycotting the Parliamentary Select Committee hearings, the GOSL should go ahead with implementing those parts of the LLRC recommendation that will not compromise the nations security and integrity.
But, the PUBLIC NEEDS TO KNOW which parts will be implemented BEFORE they are implemented.
However, no "political solutions" DEVOLVING police, land and other powers to ANY REGION on an ETHNIC BASIS, that will embed communal divisions within the framework of the nation, should be implemented.
Better still, the GOSL should SEIZE the OPPORTUNITY presented by the UNHRC resolution in Geneva to REPEAL the 13th Amendment, ABLISH ALL Provincial Councils in favor of DISTRICTS administered directly by the government, and create a "Senate" to better protect minority interests, as it had proposed earlier.
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Feasible LLRC recommendations will be implemented – Govt
No referendum, No role for Opp.
By Piyasena Dissanayake
Island.lk
March 25, 2012
The government has decided to continue the process of implementing the recommendations made by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission without the participation of the Opposition or holding a referendum on it.
Leader of the House and Irrigation Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva said yesterday that the government had decided to implement those recommendations long before the international community demanded it to do so.
It was wrong for some political parties and groups to interpret that as something the international community had got the government to implement and the government had succumbed to international pressure, Minister De Silva. "The Opposition has resorted to fish in troubled waters. We do not expect their participation in implementing the LLRC recommendations."
The minister said: "There are some others who talk of holding a referendum on it. There is no necessity for that as we have already commenced their implementation."
He said that the government was not ready to implement all the recommendations as suggested by US led anti Sri Lankan lobby at the UNHRC sessions in Geneva recently.
"We would implement only what we accept and consider feasible," Minister Silva said adding that the government was not bound to reply to India or any other nation in this regard.
On the CONTRARY, Mr. G.L. Peiris, it should NOT BE BUSINESS AS USUAL with India.
India must NOT BE ALLOWED TO INTERFERE in the INTERNAL AFFAIRS of Sri Lanka with IMPUNITY in the future.
India has too much Sri Lankan blood on its hands already. India must not be allowed to BACK STAB Sri Lanka repeatedly AT WILL as if it is an innocent party not guilty of planting Tamil Terrorism in Sri Lanka!
Sri Lanka is STILL BLEEDING from that Wound India inflicted!
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Indian stand swayed votes;GL
DailyMirror.lk
March 26, 2012
The announcement by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Parliament last Monday that India would support the United States sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka at the United Nations Human Rights Council caused countries that were to vote in favour of Sri Lanka to join forces with the US the government said.
“The announcement from India made it difficult for many countries who were going to vote in our favour to take that stand because of this very high profile development. It resulted in a situation where some countries that were going to vote with Sri Lanka, decided that the most they could do was to abstain from voting and some countries that were going to vote against the resolution voted in favour of it, after the Indian intervention,” Minister of External Affairs Prof. G.L Peries told the Daily Mirror.
He added that the Indian move altered the entire atmosphere of the Sessions in Geneva. “We do need to say that it was not just the case of losing one vote, it had a more significant impact on the situation and not just the arithmetic but the whole atmosphere,” he said.
However the Minister noted that relations with India would not be soured due to this development. “Our relationship with India is one that has stood the test of time; it has had its ups and downs and had to face strains more significant than the present situation. We will continue our relationship with India and engage with them,” he said.
Further, the government welcomes the visit by the Indian an all-party delegation of Indian MPs scheduled to visit Sri Lanka in April. “We have not asked them to cancel the visit and we are certainly prepared to receive them. We have not received any indication that they will not visit, the meeting is as scheduled,” he said.( By Dianne Silva)
How to burn bridges and alienate neighbours
By Chitra Subramaniam
DNAIndia.com
March 26, 2012
Twenty-four countries voted for the motion against Sri Lanka and there were 23 against it including abstentions. India’s vote against Colombo at the United Nation’s Human Rights Commission was decisive.
On Wednesday, we were told we are ‘inclined’ to vote for the US-backed resolution that calls upon Colombo to better investigate its war crimes. On Wednesday evening, we were told that since the prime minister had received only three paragraphs of the proposed text, we should not rush to a judgment. Votes in, we are now called to decide whether we voted under US pressure or to placate the DMK.
Doesn’t matter where the pressure came from, but what have we gained for India? Our politicians must think we are stupid as a people. As a journalist, I reported widely on the UN and its activities for over a decade, including covering the UNHRC. I find it very difficult to believe we had not seen a complete draft text some 12 hours before it was voted upon. Our pundits said they were waiting for the final text from Washington. The vote was in early on Thursday and given the time difference between Geneva and the East Coast, Washington was just waking up if not asleep during the event. If our assistance was sought on a matter as sensitive as this one where thousands were killed and we have lost a prime minister, we should have sought and secured the complete rolling text. Better still, we should have floated our own text keeping in mind our self interest. Having done neither, what will we do next?
Resolutions do not happen overnight. It is difficult to imagine that India would not have been consulted early enough. Among the countries we voted with are some with whom we have excellent diplomatic ties. Are we to believe that we were not part of the process? If we cannot talk to our friends in the international community as we claim, what does it show?
We are now trying to cushion our landing behind a dozen words we ‘successfully’ inserted in the text inviting the UN’s top human rights body to concur with Colombo before taking any action. This is laughable — UN observers don’t walk into countries disguised. Worse still, we are going around saying the resolution was taken up under an agenda item that is not very bad. The very fact that there is a resolution against a country is bad news.
We say we are an emerging global power. That, at the very least, would mean that our foreign, trade and defence policies speak with one voice. If we want to play with global rules, including their inconsistencies, we have to promote our own rules too. What are they?
How to burn bridges and alienate neighbours
......continued.....
For the past fortnight, our leaders have been speaking in several tongues. One said Sri Lankans are our blood brothers and we cannot let them down. Another made a racist comment saying we should vote with the US as we are talking about violations in our neighbourhood and not some African country. Yet another said the impact of the resolution will be mild since there is no condemnation and the text is non-binding.
Most, if not all, UN resolutions are non-binding. The UN and its bilateral agencies are debating societies at best. So, does it mean the resolution against Sri Lanka is unimportant? The contrary is true. Such moves point to trends; they are global signals and the sticks with which to beat countries selectively, suggesting it is an agenda and not a search for justice. India is best placed to know just how damaging these signals can be. Ask any diplomat who has worked to keep the Kashmir issue out of the UNHRC. I covered one such event when then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee led the Indian delegation when we were close to getting a resolution against us on Kashmir. Politicians, bureaucrats, diplomats, NGOs, journalists, et al were mobilised to keep the K-word from entering any document. It appeared as if the Line of Control had moved to Geneva. India defended itself forcefully and won, underlining the fact that Kashmir was an internal issue for us and we did not need unsolicited international advice and interference. Agree or disagree, it showed that we were a self-respecting nation able to withstand and negotiate international pressure without being pushed around.
In the current case, to butter our toast on both sides, we have also resorted to semantic jugglery saying the resolution is coming up under an article that is not very offensive. The very fact that there is a resolution is bad news, however kindly the UN body invites itself to invite Sri Lanka to investigate its human rights violations.
Earlier this month, UN Special Rapporteur Margaret Sekaggya told the UNHRC about AFSPA and its impact. She made a spirited argument for scrapping AFSPA and also sought immediate attention of the international body towards Irom Sharmila’s 11-year struggle. We will find out who our friends are when our time comes to defend our human rights record. Make no mistake — that time will come.
A friendly neighbour's betrayal
Right Angle
By Swapan Dasgupta
March 24, 2012
From the late-1980s till the end of the long civil war in 2009, travelling to Colombo was both a joyous and deeply depressing experience. The happiness came from the warmth and generous hospitality of the Sri Lankans, particularly the residents of Colombo-7 who opened their doors to a Bengali. Legend has it that that Vijaya, the first king of the Sinhalese, came by sea from Bengal.
But this welcome was always tempered by sadness. Many of those with whom I had struck an instant rapport were dead—killed by an assassin’s bullet or a bomb explosion. Their faces still haunt me: Lalith Athulathmudali, one of the most erudite and clever politicians I have encountered; Ranjan Wijeratne, the fiercely outspoken ex-planter; the soft-spoken Tamil constitutional lawyer Neelam Tiruchelvam; and the genial TULF leader A. Amirthalingam whose blood-splattered residence I visited just an hour after he was gunned down. Although Lalith’s murder remains an enduring mystery, the others were all killed by the most vicious terrorist organisations ever created: the LTTE.
A friendly neighbour's betrayal
......continued.....
Those who haven’t experienced Sri Lanka of those days will never fully comprehend the colossal tragedy of an idyllic island being transformed into the killing fields. Nor will they gauge the horrifying extent to which the LTTE transformed large numbers of a hitherto docile, industrious and peaceable community of Tamils into carbon copies of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Under the one-party state envisaged by LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran, Tamils of the Northern and Eastern provinces had two choices: acquiescence or death. The LTTE didn’t merely kill prominent Sinhalas and Rajiv Gandhi: it eliminated almost every Tamil opposed to it and hounded the Tamil middle classes out of its barbaric Eelam and, indeed, out of Sri Lanka.
Life in South Asia is said to be cheap. The LTTE made it worthless in Sri Lanka. By the middle of the civil war, brutalisation had become the norm in the island that once symbolised serendipity. Tamils killed Tamils, Sinhalas killed Sinhalas, and they both killed each other with a staggering degree of recklessness. When the civil war erupted the Sri Lankan army was essentially a ceremonial force. By the time it dispensed with Prabhakaran’s Tigers in 2009, it had become a redoubtable fighting force.
Of course there was spectacular brutality in the last days of the civil war and civilian casualties were staggeringly high. But ask any IPKF veteran and you will know that the LTTE never distinguished between its fighters and ordinary women and children. Indeed, many of those women and children in civilian clothes turned out to be hardened LTTE fighters. The suicide bomber was the creation of the LTTE well before the Al Qaeda had become a global menace and so was the human shield behind which the Tigers operated.
This is not to justify the trigger-happiness of the Sri Lankan in the last days of the civil when a reported 40,000 civilians were killed. It is merely to indicate that there was a context to the viciousness of the war—as vicious as the last months of the war against Germany during World War II. The human rights lobby that secured the condemnation of Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Commission debate last Thursday cited civilised niceties and international law to pour scorn on a small country. They didn’t take into account that what happened in the summer of 2009 wasn’t military action against unarmed civilian demonstrators—as happened during the initial stages of the Syrian uprising—but an ugly war.
What is particularly galling is India’s effrontery in voting against Sri Lanka. If any country was secretly delighted and relieved that Colombo had finally put an end to the LTTE menace, it was India. India, after all, had nurtured the LTTE—one of Indira Gandhi’s most short-sighted and cynical moves—before realising that it had created a monster that was potentially capable of infecting Tamil Nadu with its poison. Yet, for the sake of his government’s survival, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meekly acquiesced in the condemnation of a country that had preserved itself against overwhelming odds.
India’s vote was a colossal betrayal of a country that is trying hard to forget the past and begin afresh.
REALLY?
The National Government of Sri Lanka and the citizens of ALL OTHER PROVINCES of Sri Lanka HAVE NOTHIG TO SAY ABOUT THE MERGER? NOTHING?
This ILLUSTRATES the danger posed by setting up Provincial Councils as semi-autonomous fiefdoms to the national integrity of Sri Lanka. They are TOO LARGE, and HAVE TOO MANY POWERS!
They ALREADY BEHAVE as if they WERE INDEPENDENT Sovereign Nations!
That is why I advocate REPEALING the 13th Amendment, DISSOLVING ALL Provincial Councils in favor of SMALLER DISTRICTS reporting DIRECTLY to the National Government.
GOSL ... Please take Note!
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People of Sri Lanka's Eastern Province must decide on merging and North and East - Chief Minister
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 25, Colombo: Chief Minister of Sri Lanka's Eastern Province Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan says the people in the East would have to decide on whether or not to merge the Northern and Eastern Provinces.
Chandrakanthan has said the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) cannot make any decision with regard to merging the North and East.
Addressing a public rally in Vavunathivu, the Chief Minister has said the political leadership in the North was not concerned about the people in the North and has isolated the people in the East.
He has noted that the East would not be able to develop as it has in the past few years if the North and East were merged.
He has added that as a former member of the LTTE, nothing was achieved except destruction.
According to Chandrakanthan, the TNA has not responded to a statement made by him expressing desire to discuss a political settlement with them.
Therefore, he has said the Eastern Provincial Council would continue to work for the betterment of the people in the East and it would be the people in the East who have to decide on a merger of the two provinces in future.
This method of using "magnetic inertial fusion" to explosively implode a capsule containing the deuterium and tritium to cause ignition, is VERY LIKELY to founder on plasma instabilities that scuttled the original "tokamak plasma confinement" approach, and is threatening to sink the "laser inertial fusion" method at DOE laboratories.
The proof of the pudding is in preventing those plasma instabilities from growing exponentially under experimental conditions.
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Nuclear Fusion Is a Real Possibility, New Models Suggest
By Jesse Emspak
LiveScience.com
March 25, 2012
If new computer simulations pan out in the real world, nuclear fusion, the power source that makes stars shine, may be a practical possibility here on Earth, scientists say.
Simulations at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico revealed a fusion reactor that surpasses the "break-even" point of energy input versus energy output, indicating a self-sustaining fusion reaction. (This doesn't break any laws of physics for the same reason that starting a fire with a match doesn't).
Extremely high temperatures and pressures are needed to spark nuclear fusion, a process in which atomic nuclei — the protons and neutrons of atoms — literally fuse together to create a heavier element. And if the conditions are right, that fusion can release massive amounts of energy.
The results of the new study have applications in weapons testing (it's feasible to test the effects of nuclear weapons in the lab, but not in the real world) and for clean energy, as the experiment relied on deuterium, which could be extracted from seawater.
In stars, the mass of hydrogen is so large that its own gravity keeps the hydrogen and helium at the center in a small area, and the temperatures are in the millions of degrees. Essentially, the plasma (gas that has had its atoms stripped of electrons) is confined forever, and the protons can't escape and take their energy with them. So hydrogen fuses into helium, producing a lot of energy in the form of light and heat.
But that's a lot more difficult to do in a lab. For years, scientists and engineers have been looking for ways to confine plasma that is so hot it would melt the walls of any container and force atoms together to make them fuse.
Inertial fusion
At Sandia, they are testing a method called magnetized inertial fusion, in which two coils are used to generate a magnetic field. Rather than a solid container, this magnetic field confines the plasma.
A metal cylinder, which lines the inside of each of the coils, has an inner coating of deuterium and tritium (isotopes of hydrogen, the former with a single extra neutron and the latter with two). The metal liner is preheated with a laser, and then hit with a current of tens of millions of amperes. [Video: Nuclear Fusion in the Lab]
That current vaporizes the liner, but before it does so, it generates a very strong magnetic field nestled inside the one from the coils. As such, the outer magnetic field squeezes the liner with so much force that it shrinks to a small fraction of its original size. That crushing force is enough to get the deuterium and tritium atoms confined long enough to fuse into helium, releasing a neutron and some extra energy.
The method, which is different from the controversial cold fusion in that temperatures go well above room temperature, was first proposed by Sandia researchers Stephen Slutz and Roger Vesey in December; they published their work in the journal Physical Review Letters.
In their computer simulations, the output was 100 times that of a 60 million amperes put into the system. The output rose as the current went up: 1,000 times the input power was reached from an incoming pulse of 70 million amps.
Nuclear Fusion Is a Real Possibility, New Models Suggest
......continued.....
Real-world tests
Even at Sandia, there isn't a machine that can generate such a huge pulse of energy. The Z machine, a powerful X-ray generator, can hit about 26 million amperes. That might be enough, though, to prove the concept works by hitting the break-even point, where the energy put into the reaction is the same as that which comes out.
Sandia scientists are currently testing the different components of the new machine; right now, they are working on the coils, but a full-scale test should happen in 2013, they say.
Sandia spokesperson Neal Singer noted that one purpose of this work is to study the effects of nuclear explosions without actually exploding a bomb. The United States currently abides by a moratorium on underground nuclear tests. But testing warheads in some manner is essential because the nuclear stockpile is aging. Being able to create fusion reactions in a laboratory setting will go a long way toward making nuclear explosions unnecessary. [The 10 Greatest Explosions Ever]
Of course, it is still uncertain whether the reaction will work the way the researchers hope. Instabilities that appear in the magnetic fields that contain the plasma, for instance, have been an obstacle to working fusion power plants. Those instabilities allow the plasma to escape, so it doesn't fuse. But the work at Sandia is a step in the right direction, said Stephen O. Dean, president of Fusion Power Associates, an advocacy group that has pushed for development of fusion energy.
"They are working at a higher density than other fusion experiments," Dean told LiveScience. "So there's more classical physics… it's better understood." Other approaches, he said, such as using lasers to force deuterium nuclei together, produce interactions that have not been studied as extensively.
Though this work is ostensibly to test weapons, Singer acknowledged its application to power generation, and that it would be a big step.
Dean was more emphatic. "Even though it's a weapons program, [power] is in the back of everyone's mind," he said.
Oh, HELL! Why is Minister G. L. Peiris running to meet Hillary Clinton after the dirty tricks she just orchestrated against Sri Lanka, in Geneva?
Shame! Sri Lanka SHOULD NOT BE DOING THIS!
Sri Lanka should stand by her statements that she does not have to explain her sovereign decisions to ANY OTHER COUNTRY!
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Sri Lanka Foreign Minister to meet Secretary Clinton on May 18
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 27, Washington, DC: Sri Lanka's External Affairs Minister Prof. G. L. Peiris will visit the United States in May to hold discussions with the US Secretary of State.
The spokesperson of the State Department Ms. Victoria Nuland said Monday that the Secretary will meet Minister Peiris on May 18th at the State Department.
The Secretary is expected to discuss with Minister Peiris the Sri Lankan government's plan to implement the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC).
The U.S. tabled a resolution against Sri Lanka at the19th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva calling the Sri Lankan government to expeditiously implement the LLRC recommendations and investigate the allegations of war crimes committed during the last phase of the war.
The resolution was adopted with24 votes in favor in the 47-member Council last week.
When asked about Sri Lanka's statement that it will not implement the UN Human Rights Council resolution on Sri Lanka, the Spokesperson said Sri Lanka has not taken any "concrete action" required for the accountability and reconciliation and the U.S. is hoping Sri Lanka can move forward with the actions called by the resolution.
"As you know, the call in the Human Rights Council resolution was for the Sri Lankan Government to implement the recommendations of the LLRC. So that's what we're all hoping Sri Lanka can move forward with. And to date, as you know, they have not taken concrete action required for accountability and reconciliation. So that's what we are looking and hoping to see," Ms. Nuland said.
Sri Lanka rejected the resolution saying that it does not need unwarranted pressure to successfully implement the LLRC recommendations and the resolution would not help but only harm the reconciliation process launched by the government.
Now, let us follow this up with ASKING NORWAY to CLOSE DOWN their Embassy in Sri Lanka.
Don't need those Terrorist Loving Sidewinders in Sri Lanka.
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Sri Lankan government to close several foreign missions in Europe
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 27, Colombo: The Sri Lankan government has decided to shut down several diplomatic missions in Europe while establishing several new missions in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
Sri Lankan missions in Poland, Netherlands, Austria Norway and Sweden are to be closed down and one mission is to be established to oversee affairs in these countries.
The government is to focus its diplomatic ties from the West towards African nations following the outcome of the resolution on Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva.
Sri Lanka is to however maintain its missions in the UK, France, Germany and the European Union.
However, External Affairs Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris has said the decision to close some foreign missions in Europe was not linked to the UNHRC resolution.
He has explained that there were only four Sri Lankan missions in the African continent and therefore it has been decided to increase diplomatic relations with the African nations.
According to Peiris, the decision had been made before the passing of the resolution.
If you have wondered about the MOTIVATION behind Britain’s Channel 4 VENDETTA against Sri Lanka, the following article may provide a CLUE.
Marital Allegiances between Eelamists and Native Britons SEEM TO BE UNDERMINING British National Interests!
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Diaspora Link To Channel 4 Revealed
By Faraz Shauketaly
The Sunday Leader
March 25,2012
Pics: Stuart Cosgrove and Shirani Sabaratnam
The Sunday Leader has unearthed startling evidence showing that the LTTE-leaning Diaspora in Britain have made in-roads to the highest levels within the British Channel 4 TV network.
Sri Lankan born Shirani Sabaratnam originally from Jaffna and Vaddukoddai is married to Channel 4 TV’s Director of Diversity, the well-known British journalist Stuart Cosgrove. Stuart Cosgrove’s responsibilities at Channel 4 is without doubt a major one: he oversees Channel 4’s strategy to have innovation and to have creative diversity. He also is in charge of managing strategy and development of new companies, within the general ambit of Channel 4’s operations with the ultimate aim of establishing Channel 4 as the “most creatively diverse media organisation in Europe”.
Vaddukoddai is famous for the so-called “Vaddukoddai Resolution” when the TULF in 1976 first called for the separation of the North and the East in order that Tamil aspirations could be better dealt with.
In 2010 Stuart Cosgrove participated in an unusual referendum: amongst the Tamil people of the world who voted for the creation of “Eelam” – a motherland for the Tamil community in the North and the East of Sri Lanka. Sometime thereafter, Stuart Cosgrove wrote about that election, “Maryhill (in Scotland) was chosen as a polling station in a global referendum organised by expatriate Tamils in their tense stand-off with Sri Lanka, a country that has resisted their independence.” He added, the “referendum is a fascinating story of democracy withheld, with more plotlines than a political thriller and enough constitutional twists to send Scotland’s political intelligentsia into paroxysms of near-erotic delight.” Cosgrove also said, “My interest went beyond the observational. I was there to cast my vote. My wife, Shirani Sabaratnam, is a native Tamil speaker from Jaffna, on the northern peninsula of Sri Lanka. She still holds Sri Lankan citizenship and, as a “qualifying spouse”, I am allowed to participate in the poll. So, strange as it seems, the stubby pencil of democracy was rightfully mine. As I handed over my identity papers, I was acutely aware of the paradox. Voting Yes/Yes in the 1997 Scottish referendum on devolution seemed natural; voting in a referendum on Tamil independence was an unexpected experience.”
Diaspora Link To Channel 4 Revealed
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Cosgrove was able to vote at the referendum because under the so-called rules of the Tamil Diaspora, he was a “qualifying spouse” through his marriage to Shirani Sabaratnam. Stuart Cosgrove waxed eloquent about the Tamil Diaspora’s battle with Sri Lanka’s government, “Tamils have for decades fought a relentless battle with successive Sri Lankan governments, demanding greater civil rights. With well-organised communities in Toronto, London and Paris, the Tamils are the undisputed world champions of diaspora politics.”
Sabaratnam and Cosgrove live in South London and are perhaps the best known husband and wife media combination in Britain – they make a formidable team: Sabaratnam is the Commissioning Editor at UKTV and Cosgrove had similar responsibilities at Channel 4 for a while. Neither Sabaratnam nor Cosgrove had any direct input on the production of the films broadcast on Channel 4 about Sri Lanka. Both have made visits back to Sri Lanka – the fact that Cosgrove was permitted to enter Sri Lanka in spite of his professional job at Channel 4 – and in an interview published locally Sabaratnam indicated that there were plans to make a film in Sri Lanka. Whether it was a film about Sri Lanka was not immediately clear. Her plans for a film in Sri Lanka on the surface would be of immense benefit in terms of tourism, international positive exposure and for the film industry in Sri Lanka. However, the current revelations that Sabaratnam is very much an activist with the Eelam-seeking Diaspora in Britain, will serve only to sully those intentions.
Additionally industry sources in Britain have indicated that following up on the made-for-TV films, a full-screen film is also being considered for release next year.
Many questions have been raised as to how it is that in spite of the world’s hot trouble spots like in Zimbabwe, Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, Tibet, Iraq and Afghanistan, Channel 4 have yet to make a film based on their coverage of events in those countries and continues to have an abiding interest in the Diaspora’s battles with Sri Lanka. Many in Sri Lanka complained that Channel 4 had not given coverage to the atrocities committed by the LTTE which also included killings of civilians and children.
Zimbabwe in particular is of interest as it was the Channel 4 reporting that brought the world news of the ‘land grab’ from white farmers.
We attempted to contact both Sabaratnam and Cosgrove for a comment, but both were not reachable at the time of going to press.
Vote on SL 'politically motivated'-Russia
DailyMirror.lk
March 27, 2012
Without criticizing India directly for backing the US-initiated resolution against Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council, Russia has described the resolution as "politically motivated" and one that has ended up discrediting the Council itself.
The remark by Russian ambassador Alexander M Kadakin, ahead of the BRICS summit in New Delhi, has brought to the fore differences among the grouping which is seeking better coordination on major international issues.
"Sri Lanka was India's sovereign decision. The resolution was politically motivated and has discredited the UNHRC," said Kadakin.
"Why did it all of a sudden decide to take up a country-specific resolution? That is not how the UNHRC works," he added. Both Russia and China had voted against the resolution censuring Lanka for human rights violations.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last week wrote to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, saying that he himself had ensured that India dilute the wording of the draft to safeguard against any inclusion of monitoring mechanism.(TNN)
We think highly of Minister G.L. Peiris's contributions to the defence of the Motherland.
But, we think it is inappropriate for him to run to the US post-haste to explain Sri Lanka's sovereign decisions to Sec. Hillary Clinton who orchestrated the DEMONIZATION of Sri Lanka at the UN.
She ALREADY KNOWS everything she needs to know; NOTHING will alter that except perhaps the upcoming US Presidential elections.
He should have stayed at home, and written a letter to the IMPERIOUS Lady, if it was that urgent.
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GL sets record straight on US visit
By Nadira GUNATILLEKE
DailyNews.lk
March 27, 2012
External Affairs Minister Prof G L Peiris said yesterday he did not visit US in March before the resolution was taken up for consideration in Geneva to prevent possible misunderstandings.
“If I visited US before it brought in the resolution, the impression would have been created that it was a collaborative and consensual resolution between Sri Lanka and the US. ‘There could have been a huge misunderstanding unfavourable for Sri Lanka, if I visited US and met US officials at the wrong time. We corrected that misunderstanding which existed among some countries by not visiting the US in March,” Prof Peiris said at a special press briefing at the External Affairs Ministry auditorium yesterday.
Prof Peiris said that the invitation extended by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has now been accepted and the meeting will take place as scheduled.
“The dates for the meeting have been fixed for May. She will be briefed on the progress made by Sri Lanka. Technical assistance can only be given to a country with the consent of that specific country,” the minister said.
According to Prof Peiris, there are over 5,000 Sri Lankan students in US universities and there are several trade, bilateral etc links between Sri Lanka and US.
“The relationship with Sri Lanka and US is strong. US is a major market for Sri Lankan commodities, particularly apparel products. We have extensive programmes on defence cooperation,” he said. The minister said from the beginning, Sri Lanka did not agree with the US resolution being brought against Sri Lanka and thought it a mistake.
“This single event does not ruin everything. There is no need to drag on things which occurred in the past. The Sri Lankan government has one standpoint on the issue and it will be expressed to all countries.
The Sri Lankan government will not state one standpoint to India and another to US,” Prof Peiris said.
The minister said that the Indian stand fundamentally transformed the situation in Geneva and drastically affected the arithmetic. “Many countries planning to vote with us were compelled to abstain and some countries planning to abstain were compelled to vote. The problem for us was not the Indian vote but the statement made in the Indian Parliament two and a half days before the crucial vote,” he said.
“The text of the statement of the Indian Prime Minister was immediately distributed among all in Geneva. The friendship and relationship between India and Sri Lanka is historical. The relationship between the two countries is not one dimensional.
It is far from being one dimensional. It is a rich and radiant relationship. It stood in the middle of stronger and greater shocks in the past than this. We need to move on. We are planning to nurture and strengthen the relationship,” the minister said.
Russia Concerned Over "Foreign Interference" in Nations
OutlookIndia.com
March 26, 2012
New Delhi (PTI) Russia today expressed concern over "foreign interferences" in domestic affairs of sovereign countries, including Sri Lanka, and downplayed its differences of approach with India over the country-specific resolutions in the recent past in the UN.
"It is a sovereign decision of India and we respect that. But we vetoed (the resolution in the UN) because we oppose outside imposition on any sovereign country," Russian Ambassador Alexander Kadakin told reporters.
He was asked about the differences between India and Russia over the recent US-sponsored resolution in the UN Human Rights Council. The resolution against Sri Lanka for alleged war crimes was passed with 24 votes in favour, 15 against, eight abstentions. While India had voted in favour of the resolution, Russia and China were among those who voted against it.
About the situation in Syria, he said "foreign interference in domestic affairs is ever-increasing under the pretext of 'protecting civilians'."
"We are worried at the US and Israeli threats to use force against that country. A new war in the region, already overburdened with armed conflicts and acute crises, will rapidly deteriorate the situation in the vast Asian region, will entail shocks in the oil markets and, therefore, in the entire global economy," he said.
He also hoped the "New Delhi (BRICS) Summit will give a clear warning signal against military adventurous plans in the Gulf and will speak with authority in favour of renewed constructive dialogue of the international community with Iran over its nuclear programme."
My Comment at LankaWeb.com:
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Ananda-USA Says:
March 28th, 2012 at 12:42 am
Shenali,
You asked “How did these “rebels” suddenly emerge? Were they really Libyans or hired mercenaries?”.
The answer is that they were of three types: Disaffected Libyans hired by foreigners with promises of future wealth, Foreign mercenaries, and Foreign Special Forces/Troops from Italy, France, UK and the US. The entire leadership and military direction came from foreigners; only the low level fighters were Libyans bought for money.
For example, I saw an interview on Youtube with a very tanned man operating a four-barreled anti-aircraft weapon mounted on the back up of a pickup truck. This man had a brownish face that made him look like a Libyan, but from his Anglo-Saxon facial features and his British accent it was clear he was from the UK! Obviously, he had plastered his face with suntan lotion to look as Libyan as possible, but he should have kept his mouth shut because his accent gave him away. It was laughable!
As you say, they dismantled the most affluent and egalitarian country in the Arab World to grab its oil wealth … highway robbery in broad daylight, pure and simple, by the Neo-Colonialists.
NO ONE …. ABSOLUTELY NO ONE ….. Not the UN, not the ICRC, not the various “human rights” NGOs, nor the “democracy” watch dogs, not even China and Russia…. NO ONE complained. It was beautifully orchestrated exercise in “democracy”.
Furthermore, NO ONE will be held responsible for that WAR CRIME of the RAPING of LIBYA … carried out BY Foreign Neo-Colonialists, OF Foreign Neo-Colonialists, FOR Foreign Neo-Colonialists.
But, here is the funny thing: Despite Libya’s small population, NONE OF THESE NEOCOLONIALISTS will be able to PROFIT from Libya’s wealth as they hope …. because now the “internet democrats” and “foreign mercenaries” have lost control, and chaos reigns with many militias fighting each other for territory and control … just like in Somalia. The country has degenerated into anarchy with a small elite pretending to represent the country at the UN and abroad. No one is really in charge.
Meanwhile, the best organized, motivated, and now the largest, of the militias, the Muslim Fundamentalists, both home grown and foreign, are gradually taking over.
Finally, it is they who will triumph, and the Foreign Neo- Colonialists will be left holding an empty bag sucking on a stone pebble …. without anything to show for their efforts, unable to set foot in Lybia in fear of their lives, just as it will be in Iraq and Afghanistan when the US-UK withdrawal is completed.
The net result, will be the destruction of a thriving country, of immense help to the black Africans of the impoverished South, and its handover to a bunch of extremists Moslem Fundamentalists bitterly opposed to the West.
That is why I say that these Western Powers are now ruled by a collection of PREJUDICED BIRD BRAINS who don’t see the big picture in the long term beyond their noses, executing Policies that are not in the long term interest of either themselves, or the peoples of the countries they MINDLESSLY DESTROY.
My Comment at LankaWeb.cm:
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Ananda-USA Says:
March 28th, 2012 at 8:23 am
Voice123 said,
“when Tamil Nadu is properly developed there will be no reason for our Tamil chauvinists to remain in Sri Lanka or claim our country. They will happily return to their motherland.”
I disagree. Only a few will return to Tamil Nadu with improvement of its economy and loosening of the grip of the caste system, but most will remain where they are, and will try to EXPAND and CONSOLIDATE those areas of Sri Lanka into the Greater Tamil Nadu. The support for that will come from the richer and more capable Tamil Nadu.
The underlying MOTIVATION for that push to EXPAND and CONSOLIDATE is the inherent Tamil RACISM & INTOLERANCE of other people deeply ingrained over thousands of years into the Tamil culture.
That Racism, partly directed against their own people now due to caste intolerance, will be directed and focused wholly against non-Dravidian people of Sri Lanka, India and the rest of the world as the internally focused casteism is replaced by externally directed racism. That is the EXPANSIONIST VISION of Tamil Nationalists as expounded by the leaders of Tamil Nadu since independence. It may take another thousand years of CONTAINMENT of that EXPANSION for that Racism to fade.
We Sri Lankans see Tamil Racism mostly through the prism of Eelamist demands for a separate state in Sri Lanka. We are mostly UNAWARE of how Indian Tamils RESENT the non-Dravidian Peoples of India, the great majority of India’s population who have equivalent caste systems, who they routinely demonize as Aryan Invaders and lesser beings. I have personal knowledge of that attitude which you can confirm on the internet. In that case, their animosity is not based so much on differences between caste systems, but on ethnic differences and the historical memory of peoples origins chanted like a mantra by politicians and priests through the ages. Therefore, how can we assume that when casteeism is eliminated, racism will die as well?
Instead, the demise of both casteism and racism must come from enlightened leaders, like the Emperors Dharma Asoka and Akbar, reigning over many different races and religions, desire to achieve peace and harmony in their realm. They will use the power of the state to stamp out these evils and leave an enduring memory of a better society that will survive their own lifetimes. We recall that most of the Dravidian South India, and Tamil Nadu in particular, were beyond the control of these two Emperors and the societies they created, and never benefited from their enlightened ideas, allowing ancient intolerances to reign unchallenged.
Therefore, it is the yoking of the Dravidian States of South India to the more enlightened Northern States of India through a SINGLE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT, that is capable of both CONTROLLING the expansionist designs of the Racists against other nations, and ENFORCING more enlightened policies INTERNALLY towards the creation of a better society throughout the nation, that will succeed in moderating and eventually eliminating Tamil racism.
That is why it is important for Sri Lanka that India remains ONE UNDIVIDED NATION: it CONTROLS Tamil Nadu and may EVENTUALLY ERADICATE Tamil Racism.
My Comment at LankaWeb.com:
Ananda-USA Says:
March 28th, 2012 at 8:43 am
Just as the yoking of Dravidian South India to non-Dravidian North India within a Single Undivided Nation of India is necessary to CONTROL & ERADICATE both casteeism and racism in the South India, the CONTROLLING and ERADICATION of these evils in Sri Lanka must come from the Implementation of a Policy of Ethnic Integration by the Government of Sri Lanka.
Ethnic Integration should be geared to eliminating Ethnic Concentrations through settlement incentives to attain a homogeneous population distribution throughout Sri Lanka, and laws enacted to dismantle racist practices (such as the Thesavalemai laws against sale of property to non-Tamils, and devolution of power on ethnic bases) and caste-discrimination among Tamils.
Here is a REBUTTAL to those who accuse Sri Lanka of violating the human rights of Tamils: Sri Lanka has sacrificed nearly $5 billion dollars, that she can ILL AFFORD, to rehabilitate their lives and reconstruct the land RAVAGED by the LTTE.
Sri Lanka is putting her TREASURE where her HEART is, unlike the HYPOCRITES of the West who did NOTHING to help Sri Lanka defeat the terrorists or help the war affected in a MEANINGFUL way!
Sri Lanka was largely ON ITS OWN!!
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Sri Lanka spends Rs. 425 billion for North East development
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 29, Colombo: Sri Lanka has spent r 425 billion rupees during the last five years for the reconstruction and development of the Northern and Eastern provinces, the government said today.
Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Economic Development Nihal Somaweera says the government had set aside 425 billion rupees for the reconstruction activities in the Northern and Eastern provinces from the year 2006 to 2011.
The government has spent a large portion of the money for resettlement, de-mining, reconstruction of destroyed infrastructure including the water reservoirs, and for the welfare activities.
According to the Additional Secretary, 95 percent of the reconstruction activities in the two provinces had been completed.
The Indian government as well as non-governmental organizations has extended aid for housing projects in the war-torn area.
Soon after the Eastern Province was freed from the terrorist control all infrastructure facilities in the Eastern Province had been restored in all three districts of the Province under the Nagenahira Navodaya (Eastern Awakening) Programme.
Following the defeat of the Tamil Tiger terrorists in May 2009, the government has initiated the Uthuru Wasanthaya (Northern Spring), a mega development drive, to develop the five districts of the Northern Province - Jaffna, Kilinochchi, Mullativu, Vavuniya and Mannar to be in par with the other cities in the country.
The government held provincial elections for the Eastern Province Council in March 2008 after a lapse of 14 years and since then a massive development has been taken place, according to the Assistant Secretary.
The Economic Development Ministry housing project was implemented in the Northern Province in 2006 and completed in 2011.
The government has also helped the war affected communities' livelihood and cultivated paddy, vegetables and fruit in a large area and taken measures to increase milk production in the North and East provinces, the Additional Secretary said.
JOINT NAVY PATROLS supplemented by VIDEO RECORDING are indeed the best means of REFUTING the LIES levelled against Sri Lanka by Tamil Politicians manipulating Tamil Nadu Fishermen for Racist Political Purposes.
India should accept this offer to put these LIES FINALLY TO REST.
................
Sri Lanka calls for joint sea patrolling with India
COLOMBO, March 29 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka has called for joint patrolling between the navies of Sri Lanka and India to prevent clashes between fishermen of both countries, a Sri Lankan minister said on Thursday.
Douglas Devananda, a minority Tamil minister, told Xinhua that he has already discussed the issue with Sri Lankan fishermen on a disputed island in the north of the country.
Fishermen from India often stray into Sri Lankan waters to catch fish near the Kachchaitivu Island resulting in clashes between fishermen from both countries.
Devananda said that that the daily livelihood of Sri Lankan fishermen have been seriously affected with the Indians encroaching in Sri Lankan waters.
"Sometimes these Indians damage the fishing nets of Sri Lankan fishermen. This has become a serious issue. I have suggested that the Sri Lankan and Indian navy conduct joint patrolling near the maritime boundary of both countries to prevent these kind of incidents from taking place," Devananda said.
Politicians in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu have been demanding the Indian government take back the Kachchaitivu Island which was ceded to Sri Lankan years ago.
Indian fishermen have been accusing the Sri Lankan fishermen and Sri Lankan navy of attacking them when they cross the boundary line to catch fish near Kachchaitivu.
Devananda said that the only way one can find out who is attacking who is by conducting joint patrolling at the international maritime boundary line.
The Sri Lankan minister also called on Tamil Nadu politicians to look at the fishermen issue and try to solve that instead of raising allegations of human rights violations against the Sri Lankan government.
"They are looking at past issues. They should look at current issues and the fishermen issue is current and that needs to be addressed first," Devananda said.
Tamil Nadu political parties last week claimed they had convinced the Indian government to vote against Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
A majority of the UN Human Rights Council members voted in favor of a resolution on Sri Lanka calling for the implementation of a set of recommendations by a Sri Lankan war commission amidst allegations of war crimes being committed during the final stages of a war between the Sri Lankan army and Tamil Tiger rebels three years ago.
How can the US talk from both ends of the same mouth at the same time?
Easy, because they are SHAMELESS HYPOCRITES. That is HOW!
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Lanka accuses US of adopting double standards
ZeeNews.India.com
March 29, 2012
Lanka accuses US of adopting double standards Colombo: Citing America's close ally Israel's decision to sever ties with the UN Human Rights Council, Sri Lanka on Thursday accused the US of adopting double standards saying Washington was against any global involvement in the Jewish state but did not follow the same policy for Colombo.
"Israel has taken this step (to cut ties with UNHRC) despite losing the vote (against it) 36 to 1. Only US supported them. How do you explain US position when Israel says they are withdrawing from UNHRC?" Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena, a deputy minister and the government's acting spokesman, told reporters.
He was referring to the Council's decision to launch a fact-finding mission into Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Abeywardena asserted that the Sri Lankan government too was totally against foreign interference in the country.
His comments came days after the UNHRC approved in Geneva a US-backed resolution censuring Sri Lanka over its rights record.
"America, which has stated at the Geneva session that an international inference is needed in Sri Lanka, objected against such an involvement in Israel," he noted.
Israeli Premier Benjamin Natanyahu has charged the UNHRC of bias for ordering an investigation into Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank.
Israel has said the UNHRC mission would not be granted permission to enter the country.
Asked if Sri Lanka planned to sever ties with UNHRC, Abeywardena replied in the negative.
"What I want to highlight is the inconsistency in the process."
He, however, said the government was yet to make its official stand known on the resolution.
"The Cabinet has not taken any decision on the resolution yet," he stressed.
Earlier, Sri Lankan Foreign Minister GL Peiris had said the government had taken a decision not to abide by the resolution.
However, Abeywardena said the government would be issuing its official statement very soon.
The US-moved resolution which had sought to commit Sri Lanka for expeditious implementation of the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) was adopted by 24-15 with 8 abstentions last week.
Sri Lanka resisted the move to present the resolution claiming it was a biased action by the West to prop up the pro-LTTE diaspora.
SUPER IDEA if it can be done without causing garbage pileups and massive congestion that would compromise the primary function of the railway stations.
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Super markets in Sri Lanka's railway stations
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 29, Colombo: Sri Lanka Ministry of Transport has taken steps to establish super markets in 30 railway stations island wide.
A spokesman of the Ministry of Transport said that the super markets will include Coop City shops of the Cooperative Societies, fish outlets of the Fisheries Corporation and Osu Sala pharmacies of the State Pharmaceutical Corporation among others.
The Ministry has taken steps to set up some of these super markets before the upcoming New Year festive season, sources say.
Battle of the Dueling Tamil Nadu Racists: Karunanidhi and Jayalalitha fued over the Sethu Samudram Canal!
Beautiful to Watch, aint it?
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'Declare Rama Sethu a national monument'
ExpressBuzz.com
March 29, 2012
CHENNAI: A day after the Supreme Court directed the Centre to clarify its stand on Rama Sethu, Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Wednesday urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to declare Rama Sethu a national monument without further delay. She recalled her writ petition pending before the SC seeking to declare Rama Sethu as a national monument. “In view of the strong objection raised to the earlier alignment cutting across Rama Sethu due to its archaeological, historical and cultural importance, I request you to take necessary action to communicate the views of the Centre to the SC that it would take immediate steps for declaring the site as a national monument without any further delay,” Jayalalithaa said in her letter to the PM. She added that the TN government would separately be filing a counter to express its stand in this regard. The CM said after strong opposition to the earlier alignment six, cutting across the Rama Sethu, a number of writ petitions were filed in the Madras HC and SC. Jayalalithaa said she had also filed a writ of mandamus before the SC praying for a direction to Tuticorin Port Trust and Union of India, Ministry of Culture, to declare Adam’s Bridge/Rama Sethu as a national monument and take over, preserve and maintain the same. Besides, the petition also prayed the court to forbear the Union of India, Ministry of Shipping and Surface Transport and Sethu Samudram Corporation from in any manner destroying or damaging the Adam’s bridge/Rama Sethu in the process of execution of the Sethu Samudram Project.
The CM recalled that an expert committee under Dr R K Pachauri was appointed by the Centre in 2008 based on directions from the SC and the summary of the report of this committee has been forwarded to the State government for its remarks. “I have had the report of the Expert Committee examined by the concerned departments of my government and a letter is being sent separately to the Ministry of Shipping, communicating the views of the State government,” she said.
Battle of the Dueling Tamil Nadu Racists: Karunanidhi and Jayalalitha fued over the Sethu Samudram Canal!
Beautiful to Watch, aint it?
................
Complete Sethusamudram project at earliest: DMK
ExpressBuzz.com
March 29, 2012
CHENNAI: Union ministers and MPs belonging to the DMK Thursday urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi to implement the Sethusamudram project at the earliest.
They submitted a memorandum a day after Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa wrote to Singh asking him to declare Ram Sethu, also known as Adam's Bridge, a national monument.
Ram Sethu will be endangered by the Sethusamudram project, which is aimed at opening the narrow Palk Strait dividing India and Sri Lanka to ships to avoid navigating Sri Lanka.
According to the DMK memorandum released to the media here, the project is unique and was launched with the aim of providing an economic uplift to the southern peninsular Indian region.
Noting that the project was inaugurated by Singh in July 2005 in Gandhi's presence, the memorandum recalled the latter's desire that the project be completed in three years.
The Sethusamudram project envisages the dredging of a channel across the Palk Strait to let ships sailing between the east and west coasts of India, instead of circumventing Sri Lanka.
This will lead to a saving of 424 nautical miles (780 km) and up to 30 hours of sailing time, the memorandum noted.
According to it, major portions of the project work were completed. With only 22 km of dredging work remaining, vested interests had approached the Supreme Court and obtained a stay.
The court in turn has asked the central government to specify its stand on whether Sethusamudram can be declared a national monument, the memorandum states.
"We note with anguish and dismay that those certain reactionary elements and forces inimical to the development of Tamil Nadu resorted to a discernible pattern of modus operandi to sabotage projects which could have brought immense economic benefit to the people of Tamil Nadu and India," the DMK said.
"Any weakened response of this government to such a crucial issue will only expose the betrayal of hope and promise given to Tamil Nadu by our great leaders."
According to the memorandum, the project will further the development of the southern peninsular region.
My Comment at LankaWeb.com.
Ananda-USA Says:
March 29th, 2012 at 5:11 pm
“Breaking up India” is NOT FANTASTIC!
If the Union Govt loses CONTROL (it is close to that now with 850 million Indians ruled at night by Naxalites in areas the Government only rules by day), vast swathes of India extending from the Arabian sea to the Bay of Bengal will become a LAWLESS JUNGLE where the LTTE can not only find safe haven, but also would be able to setup virtual fiefdoms where they can levy taxes, setup law courts, establish weapons factories and armories, create weapons R&D labs, and develop naval facilities, and Sea Tiger style navies to smuggle in weapons and figthers, just as they did in the Wanni, outside the purview of any government oversight.
If that happens, someday they will attack Sri Lanka. Long before that the current crop of racist myopic CONVENTIONAL Politicians such as Karunanidhi, Jayalalitha. Ramadoss, Thirumavalavan, and Vaiko who worshipped the late unlamented SunGod will be BUMPED OFF as unnecessary capitalist baggage irrelevant to LTTE’s new struggle. Neither Karunanidhi who penned poems praising the LTTE SunGod, nor Jayalalitha the new Sun Goddess Amma, who hid from an LTTE death threat against her and pleaded for bodyguards from the Karunanidhi led DMK government, will survive the coming holocaust.
To exploit the Naxalite base, the LTTE will morph from a Racist Tamil Nationalist movement into a Racist Dravidian Communist movement to co-opt and exploit the existing Naxalite manpower base, and pursue their new objective of separating the Dravidian South from the non-Dravidian North of India. As in Sri Lanka, the LTTE will fight for supremacy eliminating their new found allies once they are firmly in the drivers seat. With the new ETHNIC Bias brought in by the LTTE, the Naxalites waging their CLASS STRUGGLE will be hard put to maintain cohesion between the Southern arm of their movement in the Dravidian States, and the non-Dravidian part of their movement in the Northern states. Ultimately there will be a schism between these two groups with the LTTE gaining their objective of creating a Dravidian Homeland in South India. After that, they will again turn their attention to Sri Lanka. This is capsule projection of their future activities in India.
The Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP), that has supported the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora’s goals to carve out an Eelam … most recently by pressuring the Govt. of India to support the UN resolution of the US against Sri Lanka … is sending a group of lawmakers from the Indian Parliament to Sri Lanka of a fact finding mission.
I hope they are aware of the EMERGING THREAT to the UNITY OF INDIA from the LTTE elements now infiltrating the Naxalite movement. I hope that, instead of trying to supervise and exploit Sri Lanka’s “reconciliation, rehabilitation and reconstruction” activities to devolve more power to the Eelamists trying to resurrect their Racist Bantustan in Sri Lanka, that they will look at the fire igniting in their own backyard in India, and link hands with the Government of Sri Lanka to fight this common enemy and preserve India as one nation.
This is the TIME for the BJP, and other patriotic Indian political parties, to LEARN FROM THE TERRIBLE MISTAKES that the Indira and Rajiv Gandhi governments made on Sri Lanka, and stop being SO MYOPIC and DOWNRIGHT STUPID.
It is up to the GOSL to monitor these events taking place in India, and to take steps to innoculate Sri Lanka from falling victim either to emerging security threats from Southern India, or to the undermining of its economic, political and social stability by both internal enemies, and external powers presuming a right to unload unwelcome advice on how to govern our country.
Governance of Sri Lanka is the business of Sri Lanka citizens ONLY.
The GOSL should USE THIS OPPORTUNITY to alert the BJP delegation on the THREAT TO THE UNITY OF INDIA from the EMERGING LINKAGES between the LTTE & Naxalites, offer our assistance in preventing that threat in exchange for BJP support against Eelamist activities against Sri Lanka.
Here is LEVER we can deploy to sign up the BJP as an ally.
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Indian parliamentary delegation to visit Sri Lanka in April
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 29, Colombo: The Indian government plans to send an all-party delegation to Sri Lanka next month to observe the progress of the resettlement and rehabilitation of the Tamils in the Northern Province.
The delegation will be led by the leader of opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Lok Sabha of the Indian parliament, Sushma Swaraj.
The visit is tentatively scheduled to take place from April 16 to 21, PTI reported.
The BJP has chosen Prahlad Joshi from Lok Sabha and M Venkaiah Naidu from Rajya Sabha as its representatives in the delegation.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal is reportedly finalizing the details of the visit, including the list of MPs who will be part of the delegation.
Deputy Leader of BJP in Rajya Sabha S S Ahluwalia had first suggested in December in Parliament to send an all-party delegation to Sri Lanka to learn about the condition of Tamils after the Sri Lankan government liberated the North from the Tamil Tiger terrorist control in May 2009.
India's External Affairs Minister S M Krishna had welcomed the suggestion in the Rajya Sabha and later endorsed the idea in the Lok Sabha.
The delegation was to leave on February 11 but due to Assembly elections in five states and other factors, the trip was postponed.
Swaraj has expressed hope the trip will take place this time.
India recently siding with the United States voted against Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to pass a resolution tabled by the United States calling for the speedy implementation of the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) and investigate the war crime allegations during the war.
Clouds on the Sri Lankan horizon for China
By Peter Lee
AsiaTimes
May 31, 2012
China's relationship with the regime of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa is rock solid. Chinese arms were instrumental in the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009 that brought their insurgency to an end after 27 bloody years. China is the largest provider of foreign aid and investment to the island.
And on March 22, when the United Nations' Human Rights Council (UNHRC) considered a resolution censuring Sri Lanka for shortcomings in its investigation of possible violations of international law during the war, and a deficit of credible post-conflict reconciliation initiatives, Beijing voted "no" - while India voted "yes".
Thanks in significant part to India's vote and example, the resolution - which the Sri Lankan government was extremely
Dilbert
anxious to see fail, and had dispatched a 72-person team to Geneva to lobby against - passed.
Sifting through the wreckage, Sri Lankan media noted that, if abstentions were counted with the "no" votes, the resolution had carried by only one vote - India's.
As for China, as the Ceylon Daily News put it - albeit reporting on remarks of the less than influential "Listeners Association of China Radio International in Sri Lanka" - "China's support at UNHRC highly appreciated". [1]
By a calculus that was made with considerable frequency in the Indian media, the UNHRC vote was an own goal by India, needlessly antagonizing Sri Lanka and pushing it even more closely into the arms of China.
Some characterized the vote as little more than rather ignoble truckling to the Congress Party's coalition partner, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), whose power base is the ethnically Tamil state of Tamil Nadu - the motherland of Sri Lanka's Hindu Tamils, who have often been at loggerheads with the indigenous, Buddhist Sinhalese who make up 74% of Sri Lanka's population. [2]
Supporting the narrative of Indian dithering was a letter from Prime Minister Singh to Rajapaksa stating that India had insisted that the resolution had been watered down, or as an Indian briefer told the media:
"We have always had a problem with the Western approach of telling countries that they 'must accept' or 'must do' something." That is why India insisted that the language of the resolution be changed to remove that element," he added. "Once we got that, we voted for it." [3]
However, this picture of apparent Indian fecklessness is belied by the fact that the UNHRC resolution was tabled by the United States, which is eager to promote Indian interests in South Asia. The United States insistently lobbied India to vote for the resolution. The Tamil factor is virtually non-existent in American politics, so it can safely be said that the United States was not heedlessly hoisting India on a cleft stick in the service of some other American agenda.
The US initiative appears to have been a calculated effort to wean India away from fear of its neighbors playing "the China card" to extort diplomatic and economic concessions from New Delhi. What we seem to be seeing is New Delhi, under American tutelage, employing the Barack Obama administration's preferred tactic for dealing with problematic regimes: identifying weak points to exploit, ratcheting up international and multilateral pressure on those points, and then balancing the pressure with occasional concessions and positive initiatives.
Clouds on the Sri Lankan horizon for China
.....continued 1.....
In other words, the old carrot and stick, with the stick coming first.
It means that, in a rather risky move, the United States and India are threatening to put Sri Lankan government's intensely fraught relationship with its restive Tamil minority into play if Colombo does not direct its politics and diplomacy into channels that Washington and New Delhi deem appropriate - and Beijing regards with utter dismay.
Rajapaksa - and China - are to a large extent victims of their own success in utterly crushing the Tamil Tigers insurgency.
In 2009, the Sri Lankan army did not pursue an objective of defeat of the Tamil Tigers. Its goal was absolute annihilation.
In the end-game of the war, the Tigers - and hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tamil civilians - were cornered on a tiny spit of land on the northeast coast in the region of Vanni. Military targets, civilians and hospitals were pounded with artillery; then the army moved in from three sides and, according to credible reports and evidence, fought their way in with little if any regard for civilian casualties, resulting in perhaps as many as 40,000 deaths.
Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Talim Eelam, or LTTE, and most of the top cadres died in battle or shortly afterward. For some, surrender does not appear to have been an option. Captured Tamil fighters and members of the Tiger political and bureaucratic apparatus - because the Tigers had exercised de facto control over a significant swath of territory at one time - were summarily liquidated. Victims included Prabhakaran's 12-year-old son, who was apparently executed by the Sri Lankan army, together with five escorts who were trying to deliver him to safety or surrender.
The Western world and India were willing to turn a blind eye toward the bloody excesses of the Sri Lankan army in 2009 because the Tigers were a truly nasty bunch that had worn out its geopolitical welcome.
In the early years of the movement, Tamil self-determination had developed a significant international cachet along the lines of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. In 1987, India parachuted food parcels into the Tamil stronghold of Jaffna in order to help rebels withstand a Sri Lankan army siege.
India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) trained Tamil fighters - including the Tigers and five other groups that RAW, in its wisdom, decided it could play off against each other - in camps in southern India as part of a strategy to project Indian power into Sri Lanka.
Instead, the Tigers assassinated the leadership of the pro-Indian Tamil militants and absorbed their fighters into the LTTE. In 1987, India - with Sri Lankan consent - sent a peacekeeping force into northern Sri Lanka that quickly came into conflict with its erstwhile clients, the unrepentantly militant Tamil Tigers.
India fought a bloody and unsatisfying campaign against the Tigers before withdrawing in 1990. Subsequently, Prabhakaran ordered the assassination of premier Rajiv Gandhi. The killing - ironically carried out by a militant trained in a RAW camp - guaranteed the hostility of the Indian government toward the Tigers.
The LTTE allegedly pioneered the use of the suicide vest, engaging in almost 400 attacks over 20 years, including attacks that killed Gandhi and, in 1993, the president of Sri Lanka, Ranasinghe Premadasa. The LTTE ethnically cleansed the Muslim population of the areas it controlled, expelling an estimated 72,000 people.
In a notorious incident, LTTE cadres bound, blindfolded and executed 600 Sri Lankan police officers who had surrendered to them on the instructions of the Colombo government in a confrontation in 1990 during a ceasefire period. The LTTE's sympathizers explained these incidents as matters of military and revolutionary necessity, but the fact remains that the LTTE, a militant organization organized along Leninist principles, were not loathe to take the bloodiest path out of their challenges.
Clouds on the Sri Lankan horizon for China
.....continued 2.....
European powers, especially Norway, still tried to broker a peace deal. However, after 9/11 armed struggles of national liberation were passe and the Tamil Tigers were slotted squarely in the terrorist category, classified as a terrorist organization by 32 nations including India, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the European Union. Their sources of funding and arms were attacked and, when the end came, the UN and the Western powers made only the most ineffectual efforts to broker a settlement that would forestall the utter destruction of the LTTE.
However, it was China and not the West that played the crucial role in supporting the final Sri Lankan army campaign against the Tigers.
Major Neil Smith, Operations Officer of the US Army and Marine Corps Counter-insurgency Center from 2007 through 2009, rather enviously described the no-holds-barred "Rajapaksa Model" and the Chinese support that it relied on:
Beginning in 2005, China stepped in to provide an additional $1 billion of military and financial aid annually, allowing the LTTE to sever the strings attached to Western aid regarding the conduct of anti-LTTE operations. In exchange for the aid, China received development rights for port facilities and other investments ...
China's aid enabled the Sri Lankan government to attain the military superiority needed to defeat the LTTE. The Sri Lankan military budget rose by 40 percent between 2005 and 2008, and the army's size increased by 70 percent, an addition of nearly 3,000 troops per month.
China provided more than simple financial support. It and several other states furnished the government with crucial political cover in the United Nations. Western countries long demanded that Sri Lanka respect human rights and avoid civilian casualties as a condition of continued aid. The government viewed these conditions as a hindrance to its ability to defeat the LTTE. The substitution of Western military aid with that from China enabled the government to disregard Western concerns about human rights and pursue its campaign of attrition unimpeded. China prevented introduction of resolutions at the United Nations critical of Sri Lanka's renewed offensive, giving it a free hand in the conduct of its operations despite the protests of human rights groups and Western governments. [4]
Cornered in Vanni in early 2009, the LTTE used the over 200,000 civilian refugees on the peninsula as human shields, stationing cadres to shoot those who tried to escape and forcibly impressing children as young as 14 into the Tigers for use as front-line cannon fodder.
The last weeks were a nightmare as the Sri Lankan army advanced behind barrages of artillery fire that, among other locations, apparently targeted the makeshift hospitals that, at the beginning, may have had wards for Tiger fighters but at the end were scenes of total chaos and undifferentiated horror as doctors, without antibiotics, anesthetics, or transfusion supplies, and no other means to treat many wounds other than amputation, hacked off limbs of shrapnel victims with butcher knives and stacked the arms and legs in piles.
Rajapaksa made the ludicrous claim that the final battle against the Tiger stronghold was "the biggest hostage rescue operation in the world".
The Red Cross, whose attempts to deliver aid were largely frustrated by the Sri Lankan government, described the final days at Vanni as "an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe". [5]
Post-war, the dominant picture has been of Sinhalese dominance and Tamil subjugation.
After the fall of Vanni, 250,000 traumatized Tamil internally displaced people (IDPs) were herded into a gigantic camp called Menik Farm under miserable conditions for detention, screening, and, for the particularly unlucky, designation by balaclava-clad Tamil turncoats for harsh interrogation.
Clouds on the Sri Lankan horizon for China
.....continued 3....
The International Crisis Group recently described the situation in the defeated Tamil territories:
The slow but steady movement of Sinhala settlers along the southern edges of the province, often with military and central government support and sometimes onto land previously farmed or occupied by Tamils, is particularly worrying. These developments are consistent with a strategy - known to be supported by important officials and advisers to the president - to change "the facts on the ground", as has already happened in the east, and make it impossible to claim the north as a Tamil-majority area deserving of self-governance.
Deepening militarization of the province presents a threat to long-term peace and stability. Far in excess of any legitimate need to protect against an LTTE revival, the militarization of the north is generating widespread fear and anger among Tamils: indeed, the strategy being executed runs the risk of inadvertently resurrecting what it seeks to crush once and for all - the possibility of violent Tamil insurrection. The construction of large and permanent military cantonments, the growing involvement of the military in agricultural and commercial activities, the seizure of large amounts of private and state land, and the army's role in determining reconstruction priorities are all serious concerns. [6]
Today, Rajapaksa presides over a triumphalist Sinhalese state that is largely defined by its near-total victory over the Tamil Tigers, a heavy handed occupation of Tamil regions in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, a reputation for dispatching unmarked white vans to disappear critics, and a commitment to manipulating and intimidating the press that places it in the unenviable position of 163rd on the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index. [7]
Its primary public relations preoccupation is deflecting attention from the civilian victims at Vanni, since acknowledgment of their victimhood and the circumstances behind it would quite possibility implicate the Sri Lankan Army and its entire command structure up to the president in complicity in war crimes.
In March of 2011, the United Nations made a powerful effort to breach the political and legal defenses of the Rajapaksa government with its "Report of the Secretary General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka".
In addition to persuasively documenting the suffering at Vanni, the report made the explosive assertion that, because of the inadequacies of the government's quaintly named Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission in particular (deficient in "best practices of truth seeking"; "deeply flawed ... does not meet international standards for an effective accountability mechanism" sniffed the report) and the Sri Lankan legal system in general in getting to the bottom of the war crimes issue:
The Secretary General should immediately proceed to establish an independent investigative mechanism ... to monitor and access the extent to which the Government of Sri Lanka is carrying out an effective accountability process ... conduct investigations independently into the alleged violations ... collect and safeguard for appropriate future use provided to it that is relevant to accountability for the final stages of the war ... [8]
Clouds on the Sri Lankan horizon for China
.....continued 4....
In other words, the recommendation is that the UN conduct an independent investigation that undermines the claims of the Rajapaksa administration as the savior of Sri Lanka, openly discredits the military and threatens its personnel with prosecution ... and preserves the dossier for "appropriate future use" ie criminal prosecution against Rajapaksa and his associates for war crimes if and when they leave office, no longer enjoy immunity, and are vulnerable to the judicial attentions of an unfriendly, opportunistic, or righteous successor government.
No wonder the Rajapaksa government fought the March 22 UN Human Rights Council resolution that uses the expert's report as its foundation: if implemented, it is not only a gun to the head of Sri Lanka's government and military elite; it is an attack on Sinhalese chauvinism that would provide desperately needed political oxygen to the Tamil opposition.
International pressure on the Sri Lankan government was intensified by the release and extensive international circulation of two documentaries in 2011 and 2012 by Britain's Channel 4 on the theme of "Sri Lanka's Killing Fields." Non-Governmental Organizations arranged screenings of the original program for US, British, and EU parliament politicians. [9]
The programs appeared to be the result of close synergy between Channel 4 and sources in the UN, with the documentaries replicating the narrative of the expert's report and intensifying it through the presentation of horrific videos, including trophy footage of summary executions and the apparent aftermath of rape-murders taken by Sri Lankan army soldiers.
Chinese support in the Security Council should protect the Rajapaksa government from international war crimes prosecution. However, the main threat of the human rights campaign is political, not legal.
With the Tigers and the moral and political conundrum of their enthusiastic commitment to terrorism out of the way and the focus lasered on the brutality of the Sinhalese regime, Sri Lanka's embattled Tamils - and the vociferous Tamil diaspora - are once again advancing their claims to improved treatment, greater political autonomy ... and meaningful support from the international community.
It is a call that New Delhi, now that Sri Lanka's Tamil community has shed the hateful incubus of the anti-India LTTE, is prepared, however cautiously, to heed.
It is a call that the United States, for its usual complicated reasons, appears ready to echo.
As the Sri Lankan situation evolved, the US State Department gently prodded the Sri Lankan government on the issue of reconciliation and kept a wary distance from Tamil politicians. As late as November 2011, the State Department snubbed a delegation from the Tamil National Alliance, which has disavowed Tamil independence and represents Tamil interests in the Sri Lankan parliament. UN chief Ban Ki-moon did not meet with the delegation, either.
This was apparently a demonstration, sincere or not, of US and UN willingness to let Sri Lanka put its own house in order before tabling the UNHRC resolution.
Clouds on the Sri Lankan horizon for China
.....continued 5....
However, by late February 2012 the Obama administration's key point man for Sri Lanka, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake met with the "Tamils for Obama", a rather marginal and misnamed political grouping whose primary enthusiasm is for Tamil independence rather than President Obama's policies:
"We also handed him a copy of our Referendum in Sri Lanka to Gain Self-determination for Tamils," said a press spokesman for Tamils for Obama, "It is modeled on the one that was recently voted on in southern Sudan, and which led to the creation of the new country of South Sudan. We hope for a similar referendum and result in northeastern Sri Lanka.
"We also gave him a second copy which we asked him to pass along to Secretary of State Clinton. He promised it would be done, and immediately passed the copy along to a subordinate official to take to Secretary Clinton." [10]
As to where all this combination of domestic oppression and righteous international finger-wagging might lead, maybe it is "Springtime in Colombo", as the Lanka Standard speculated on February 20:
There is also a growing apprehension within the government that they are at the receiving end of a possible strategy of "Regime Change" propelled by external intervention. Government members have been seeing a foreign hand not only in the issue of war crimes but also behind the economic unrest that is growing amongst the general population ...
In his Independence Day speech, President Rajapaksa warned against those who aspired for an "Arab Spring" type of uprising… [11]
An Arab Spring-style eruption against Rajapaksa is unlikely in the short term. Despite his government's excesses, he still basks in the aura of the victory over the Tigers and strong support from a Sinhalese majority that has limited sympathy for the Tamils. At the same time, he is headed into a political cul-de-sac.
His government lacks the credibility, will, and resources to achieve reconciliation with the Tamils. If the Sri Lankan government's callous policy of oppression of the Tamils and military occupation and creeping Sinhalization of the Tamil homelands backfires and a new political crisis erupts, any attempt to repeat the military solution of 2009 will be met with a united chorus of international condemnation and Chinese arms and support will avail him little.
It will be India that possesses the ability to act as an honest broker and offer a measure of protection, support, and a future to the embattled Tamils of Sri Lanka.
This Indian role - and displacement, at least in part, of Chinese influence in Sri Lanka - is something the United States will be keen to promote, using its ability to orchestrate pressure on the Sri Lankan regime.
One gets a picture of the levers available to the United States when one considers that Sri Lanka purchases over 90% of its oil from Iran and currently relies on a waiver graciously granted by the United States in order to continue its imports without suffering sanctions to its banking system.
America's benevolence has its limits, however.
Clouds on the Sri Lankan horizon for China
....continued 6....
Assuming that Rajapaksa continues with his current policies of Sinhalese chauvinism and political repression, whatever he tries to do in the area of reconciliation will probably be judged inadequate by the United States - until he is enticed into a process of reconciliation that place India's good offices, and its ability to manage the Tamil brief more effectively than the Sri Lankan government itself - at the center of Sri Lanka's ethnic politics.
Ironically, it may be China's contribution to the destruction of the Tamil Tigers that opens the door to New Delhi's return to a position of significant influence in Sri Lanka and a decline in Beijing's clout.
Notes
1. 'China's support at UNHRC highly appreciated', Daily News, Mar 29, 2012.
2. Karunanidhi's 'Eelam dream' is a curse on Lanka Tamils, FirstPost, Mar 23, 2012.
3. Resolution 'balanced', Manmohan tells Rajapaksa, The Hindu, Mar 24, 2012.
4. Understanding Sri Lanka's Defeat of the Tamil Tigers, NDU, 4th Quarter, 2010.
5. Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka, UN, Mar 31 2011.
6. Sri Lanka's North I: The Denial of Minority Rights, Crisis Group, Mar 16, 2012.
7. Sri Lanka's sinister white van abductions, BBC, Mar 14, 2012. Sri Lanka drops in World Press Freedom Index, Colombo Page, Jan 26, 2012.
8. Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka, UN, Mar 31 2011, Page 120.
9. Sri Lanka's killing fields, Channel4, mar 14, 2012.
10. Tamils For Obama Meets With Blake On 29th Feb, Colombo Telegraph, March 27, 2012.
11. Sri Lanka: Government fears strategy of "Regime Change" through external intervention, Lanka Standard, Feb 20, 2012.
Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with US foreign policy.
OMG!
Gen Singh said India's air defence was "97% obsolete", the army lacked the equipment it needed and its entire tank fleet was "devoid of critical ammunition to defeat enemy tanks".
............
India army chief says leak of his letter is 'treason'
BBC
March 29, 2012
India's army chief General VK Singh has said the leak of his controversial letter on defence supplies to the prime minister amounted to "high treason".
The source of the leak should be found and "dealt with ruthlessly", he said.
In his letter earlier this month, Gen Singh said much of India's defence equipment was "obsolete" and the forces were "woefully short" of weapons.
It is the latest in a series of rows between the army and the government and the letter led to uproar in parliament.
On Wednesday, Defence Minister AK Antony told parliament that the "government is committed to doing all that is necessary to secure the nation".
In his letter, Gen Singh said India's air defence was "97% obsolete", the army lacked the equipment it needed and its entire tank fleet was "devoid of critical ammunition to defeat enemy tanks".
The infantry lacked "night fighting" capabilities and was crippled with "deficiencies of crew-served weapons", the letter added.
'An outrage'
"This is an outrage. Official communication with the prime minister, the defence minister or anybody for that matter with the chief of the armed staff is privileged information," Gen Singh said in a statement.
"The leaking of the letter should be treated as high treason. This cynical approach to tar my reputation has to stop.
"The source of the leak has to be found and dealt with ruthlessly," the statement said.
Army tanks in Delhi - 26 January 2004 The military has been on a spending spree to update its weapons
The letter was leaked to the media and reported extensively on Wednesday.
The revelations dominated discussion in parliament on Wednesday with opposition MPs questioning the government over the issue.
Defence Minister Antony said the leak was "a breach of national security" and several MPs demanded that the source of the leak be identified and punished.
Some MPs blamed Gen Singh for the leak and demanded that he be sacked.
In a short statement in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament, Mr Antony said the government would take "appropriate action" on the letter.
India's armed forces have been attempting a modernisation drive in recent years that has made the country the world's top arms importer.
Analysts say the upgrade has been hampered by delays and a lack of planning.
India army chief says leak of his letter is 'treason'
.....continued....
Bribery allegation
The general's letter follows allegations he made on Monday in an interview with The Hindu newspaper that retired Lt Gen Tejinder Singh had offered him $2.7m (£1.7m) to approve the purchase of 600 "sub-standard" vehicles of a "particular make".
Lt Gen Singh has vehemently denied the charges, saying the accusations are "totally false" and he has filed a court case against the army chief.
The defence minister admitted that the army chief had informed him about the bribe offer a year ago and ordered a probe by federal police.
Mr Antony said he did not act earlier on the general's bribery allegation as he had never received a written complaint.
Earlier this year, Gen Singh was involved in an acrimonious row with the government over his retirement age.
The general went to the Supreme Court to have his date of birth as recorded by the military - 10 May 1950 - changed to a year later so that it matched the date on his birth certificate and other documents.
But he dropped the case after the court indicated it could rule against him because he had already accepted three promotions that were based on the earlier date.
Changing the date would have meant that he could retire in 2013 instead of later this year.
Defence analyst Rahul Bedi told the BBC that the age row was a symptom of wider acrimony between the armed forces and the government that has threatened to undermine the defence modernisation drive.
William Hague faces legal action over Sri Lankan diplomat war crimes claim
Guardian.co.uk
March 30, 2012
Tamil group to bring judicial review against foreign secretary over refusal to declare military attache persona non grata
Foreign secretary William Hague
Foreign secretary William Hague has warned of the facing the world if Iran acquires nuclear weapons. Photograph: Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty Images
An organisation representing the international Tamil diaspora is taking legal action against William Hague over the Foreign Office's failure to confront a senior Sri Lankan diplomat accused of complicity in crimes against humanity during the final stages of the island's civil war.
The Global Tamil Forum has instructed the law firm Birnberg, Peirce and Partners to bring a judicial review against the foreign secretary for his refusal to declare Major General Prasanna Silva – now the military attache to the Sri Lankan High Commission in London – persona non grata.
The forum alleges that Silva, who has lived in the UK since 2010, was involved in systematic attacks on Tamil civilians between January and May 2009 when he was a senior commander in the Sri Lankan army.
In a letter confirming instruction, the law firm writes: "You have informed us that the Global Tamil Forum and other organisations have made representations to the FCO with credible evidence of the offences allegedly committed by Major General Prasanna Silva during the war in Sri Lanka. However, hitherto, the FCO has failed to declare Maj Gen Silva and his family personae non grata."
The letter notes that the FCO has it in its power to ask a foreign government to waive an individual's diplomatic immunity so that they can be arrested and questioned by police.
It adds that if there is "sufficient evidence to justify court proceedings" – and if the foreign government still refuses to lift immunity – the Foreign Office can ask for the withdrawal of the individual and their family or declare them "personae non grata". The letter also points out that the Metropolitan police arrests 20-30 diplomats a year.
The Foreign Office said it had not yet received any correspondence relating to legal action by the GTF, but added: "We have been approached by several NGOs regarding allegations that war crimes were committed by Major-General Silva. We take such allegations very seriously and advised the NGOs that if there was credible evidence, they should pass it to the Metropolitan police."
A Scotland Yard spokesman would not comment on suggestions that the force was investigating allegations that Maj Gen Silva had been involved in war crimes, saying only: "We can confirm that we have received information and we are unable to discuss [it] further."
The Sri Lanka High Commission said she was unaware of the GTF's legal action and declined to comment on allegations that Maj Gen Silva was involved in crimes against humanity.
The commission has previously described such allegations as "highly spurious and uncorroborated" and accused British media of seeking "entirely falsely, to implicate members of the Sri Lankan government and senior military figures" in such acts.
The Global Tamil Forum told the Guardian that the diaspora would take legal action against anyone suspected of involvement in war crimes.
"Every alleged war criminal of Sri Lanka must know that the Tamils will not rest until justice is served for the terrible crimes they are alleged to have committed," he said.
"This along with other legal proceedings must send a message to the regime that they are not welcome on the international scene. There remain other alleged war criminals in Australia and in New York where we will start proceedings soon."
Tamil Eelamist WOLVES who funded and supported murder & mayhem in Sri Lanka, now posing as VICTIMS hiding under sheepskins, are planning PROSECUTION of those who STOPPED THEIR CRIMES against innocent people of Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lanka Government should allocate $500 million from the National Budget to SEKK OUT & PROSECUTE Eelamist Organizations and their Leaders as War Criminals. This is NOW A NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE that MUST BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY and the PROPER RESOURCES allocated and deployed for National Defense.
ENOUGH SITTING ON OUR HANDS! Let us not wait for ANOTHER 30 Years like we did in CONFRONTING & DEFEATING the LTTE in the Battlefield. Recall that LACK OF RESOURCES is what prevented the Sri Lanka Armed Forces from winning in the battlefield then. Let us allocate the NECESSARY RESOURCES LIBERALLY now!
The Failure to FIGHT & WIN this war will have severe economic, political and territorial repurcussions for Sri Lanka. Fighting this LEGAL BATTLE is AS IMPORTANT as FIGHTING the MILITARY Battle which we won.
They BEGAN the terrorist War; We ENDED it.
Now, they have BEGUN a LEGAL War; Let us END it Victoriously.
Let us GET TO WORK!
……………..
William Hague faces legal action over Sri Lankan diplomat war crimes claim
Tamil group to bring judicial review against foreign secretary over refusal to declare military attache persona non grata
By Sam Jones
guardian.co.uk
March 30, 2012
…….
The Global Tamil Forum told the Guardian that the diaspora would take legal action against anyone suspected of involvement in war crimes.
“Every alleged war criminal of Sri Lanka must know that the Tamils will not rest until justice is served for the terrible crimes they are alleged to have committed,” he said.
….More
Here is an example of what happens when a nation in divided into competing fiefdoms with ambitious politicians: Karnataka and TN are battling over who gets the lions share of the Cauvery River water. If the National Government was empowered to make the necessary decisions in the national interest to benefit the largest number of citizens everyone’s the project can go ahead. Currently, the project id DEAD IN WATER.
Likewise, if Provincial Councils are given Land Powers in Sri Lanka, we will see these kinds of battles breaking out between the leaders of the Provinces ruled as separate fiefdoms by intransigent politicians like Jayalalitha in TN. In addition, they will invoke their rights to PREVENT National Infrastructure Projects from being implemented in the Nation’s Interest, especially if different Ethnic majorities govern in adjoining provinces.
For example, no project SPANNING MORE THAN ONE PROVINCE, such as the Mahaveli River Development Project can be undertaken either by the national government or by the Provinces.
In a large country like India, some power has to devolved to states, because governing that vast land as a single unit is impractical.
However, one of the few advantages of being a small country like Sri Lanka, smaller than most States in India, is that it CAN BE GOVERNED MORE SIMPLY AS A SINGLE ADMINISTRATIVE UNIT. Therefore, there is NO REASON to hoist the additional cost and bureaucratic inefficiency of MULTIPLE COMPETING BUREAUCRACIES of Provincial Governments upon our already harassed citizens trying to eke out a living, and struggling for survival as a nation in the increasingly competitive global marketplace.
Therefore, we must REPEAL the 13th Amendment, DISSOLVE the PROVINCIAL COUNCILS, REPLACE then with DISTRICTS administered DIRECTLY by the National Government. That will increase the SECURITY of the nation, enable policing by ONE National police force eliminating demands for police powers by provinces, reduce the cost borne by tax-payers to support unnecessary provincial government employees, and will minimize the bureaucratic barriers to individuals and businesses.
……………………
TN won’t allow new Cauvery dam: Jayalalithaa
ExpressBuzz.com
March 31, 2012
CHENNAI: With the Cauvery water sharing row escalating, Tamil Nadu government today made it clear that it would not allow construction of a new dam by Karnataka at Mekedhatu across the river under “any circumstances.”
Replying to a special mention on the water dispute in the Assembly, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa accused Karnataka of not honouring the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal award.
She said Karnataka makes all efforts to first fill its reservoirs and then release only surplus waters to Tamil Nadu.
“I and my government are committed to securing the state’s rightful share in the Cauvery waters,” she said, amid thumping of desk by the members.
She said Karnataka cannot build a dam at Mekedhatu, about 100 km from Bangalore, without Tamil Nadu’s acceptance. “If Karnataka tries to build a dam, Tamil Nadu will not allow the move under any circumstances.”
Her assertion comes in the backdrop of tough postures being adopted by Karnataka leaders on the release of water from Cauvery to Tamil Nadu.
TN won’t allow new Cauvery dam: Jayalalithaa
.......continued......
Accusing Karnataka of using water from its dams for summer irrigation, she said, as per the final orders of the Tribunal, Karnataka had used 203 tmc ft of water for irrigation as against the stipulated 103.24 tmc ft of water.
“Karnataka is also not giving water to Tamil Nadu for its Kuruvai cultivation (short term) in June and July,” she said.
Since Karnataka was utilising water for its summer crops, during monsoon that state took efforts to fill its reservoirs and then released water to Tamil Nadu, resulting in Mettur dam in the state not getting its due share, she said.
Recalling her meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after she assumed office last year, Jayalalithaa said she had discussed the issue of notifying the Tribunal’s award and setting up Cauvery Water Management Board for implementing it.
“But so far, the Centre has not acted on these demands and Tamil Nadu government has been pressing for them,” she said.
The two states are locked in decades-long dispute on sharing Cauvery waters.The Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal, set up by the Centre, had in 2007 given its final award, allocating 419 tmcft water to Tamil Nadu and 270 tmcft to Karnataka annually.
However, Karnataka has challenged the award in the Supreme Court, alleging it gave a raw deal to the state overlooking its requirements and rights.
LAND POWERS DEVOLVED TO INDIAN STATES Paralyze Progress.
Tamil Nadu & Karnataka states in India can’t even proceed to build Hydroelectric Power Plants WITHIN their OWN STATES because the Cauvery river that transports the water crosses their shared state boundary!
TOTALLY TIED UP IN Red Tape & Political Posturing by Communal Politicians playing to the Gallery!
This again illustrates the PERILS OF DEVOLUTION of Land Powers to competing Provinces in Sri Lanka.
…………………
Karnataka makes U-turn on hydel project
ExpressBuzz.com
March 31, 2012
CHENNAI: The National Hydro Electric Power Corporation Limited proposed to set up hydel power stations at Sivasamudram, Mekedhatu, Rasipuram and Hogenakkal in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, located between Krishnaraja Sagar and Mettur Dams and drawing water from Cauvery river. Union Ministry of Power sent this proposal to concerned States in 1999.
TN agreed to the proposal in July 2004 by laying three conditions — in the first phase, work on hydel power projects at Sivasamudram and Hogenakkal should commence simultaneously after getting the permission. In the second phase, work on Mekedhatu and Rasimanal projects should be taken up simultaneously and the NHPC should operate all these four power projects.
Initially, Karnataka agreed to these conditions, but later announced that it would implement the Sivasamudram and Mekedhatu projects on its own as those places fell within Karnataka. Following this, TN had conveyed to Karnataka that it can’t take up any new project across inter-State river Cauvery without getting TN’s consent.
Besides, TN had also filed an interim petition before the Supreme Court seeking to restrain Karnataka from implementing the Mekedhatu and Sivasumdaram projects till the review petitions pending before the SC as well as Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal were disposed off and that the NHPC should operate all the four projects. The case is still pending before the court.
Jayalalithaa said Karnataka had not been releasing Cauvery water to TN when it was vital, during June and July. “Considering all these facts, the government headed by me filed a plea before the SC,” she said.
Jayawewa!
............
Sri Lanka President pledges to set up new universities
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 31, Belihuloya: Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa today pledged to set up new universities in the country to enable the country to become a knowledge hub.
Addressing a function held at the Sabaragamuwa University to open the new building complex for the Faculty of Applied Sciences and Faculty of Social Sciences and Languages, the President said all students who acquire higher education should have equal knowledge and the country will become a knowledge hub only by providing a fully-fledged education to everyone.
He said new universities need to be set up as the country needs intellectuals at this juncture since the country is heading towards new era following the defeat of terrorism.
He assured that his government is working to provide all facilities to achieve these objectives.
The new building complex at the Sabaragamuwa University was constructed at a cost of 665 million rupees.
The President also pledged to provide a fully-equipped sport complex and ground to the university.
Chancellor of the Sabaragamuwa University Venerable Kumburugamuwe Vajira Thero and Higher Education Minister S.B. Dissanayake also spoke at the event.
Deputy Minister of Higher education Nandimithra Ekanayake, Secretary to the Ministry of Higher education Sunil Jayantha Navaratne, Ministers John Seneviratne and Pavithra Wanniarachchi, Governor of Sabaragamuwa Province W.J.M. Lokubandara, Chief Minister Maheepala Herath, Chairman of the University Grants Commission Prof. Gamini Samaranayake and Vice Chancellor Professor Mahinda Rupasinghe also participated in the occasion.
(Photos by Sudath Silva)
ANOTHER American MUTT, former US Diplomat William Avery, FOOLISHLY PONTIFICATES that further HEGOMONISTIC Military Involvement, like those that has BANKRUPTED THE US with NO END in SIGHT, should have been PURSUED by India in Sri Lanka to wipe out Prabhakaran and the LTTE.
I DISAGREE.
Instead, India should have used that OPPORTUNITY to HELP Sri Lanka with all the Military Equipment and Funds necessary, and URGED RAMPING UP Sri Lanka's Defence Forces, for the Sri Lankan Defence Forces to do that JOB.
Will these MUTTS EVER LEARN not to interfere in other peoples countries and do their job for them? These HEGOMONISTIC ATTITUDES must change SOON before the entire world is degraded into becoming a LAWLESS SOMALIA where MIGHT becomes the ONLY RIGHT.
GIVE a Man a FISH, and feed him for a DAY,
TEACH a Man to FISH, and feed him for LIFE!
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Indo-US relationship drifting: book
HindustanTimes.com
April 1, 2012
India should have sent its troops back to Sri Lanka to kill or capture Prabhakaran and the LTTE leadership after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, says a new book by a former US diplomat.
Rajiv Gandhi’s killing was an attack on India’s status as a regional power. Forcibly bringing Prabhakaran to India to face trial would have sent a clear message to the region, and the world, that India would defend its political leaders from attack, defend its political system from intimidation and defend its primacy in South Asia against any challengers, the author says.
A frightened India became content with being a passive regional power rather than active global power, says the book China’s Nightmare, America’s Dream: India as the next global power by William H Avery, former American diplomat.
Avery was on posting in India and served in the US department of state during the administrations of president Bill Clinton and George W Bush.
Indo-US relationship drifting: book
.......continued....
India’s window of opportunity to influence Sri Lanka will never be as wide open as it was in 1991 after Rajiv’s killing, the author says adding that India’s craven inaction in Sri Lanka after the assassination cost it valuable years in its quest to become a global power.
The events of 1991 that included the shame of having required to sell its gold and killing by a terrorist organisation of its former prime minister were a low point in the history of modern India.
Seven years after its annus horribilis, India, however, was able to make its first crucial step towards true power – the move that stunned the world – and earned India virtually universal approbation. But history has proven India’s 1998 nuclear test to have been a wise choice, says Avery.
The Pokhran test changed India overnight into a ‘front-line’ post in the US Foreign Service. It also made India a much more interesting assignment for an American diplomat, the author says. He says by any measure the 1998 American sanctions on India were a failure.
Withdrawn in stages and completely by 2001, the sanctions achieved little other than to make the US feel that it was taking action against India’s nuclear test. By the time the decade ended the US had become resigned to a nuclear India.
The world is no longer responding to India with indifference. India has the world’s attention and respect. Now India must reach out and claim global power status. Doing so will require a transformation of India’s economy far greater than that which followed the reforms of 1991, and, a foreign policy far more assertive than that of the past decade, Avery says.
The author says that to become a true global power the Indian economy will have to make a transition from outsourcing to innovation-intensive industries. Its multinationals will have to become truly global companies, with more business outside India than within.
Finally, India must develop and implement a more assertive foreign policy one that backs talk of great power status with military might and willingness to use it.
“China has no such timidity in its foreign affairs. In addition to the port in Sri Lanka, it is also helping expand the Pakistani port of Gwadar and Chittgong port in Bangladesh.
China has also requested Burma to allow its warships to dock at Burmese ports, which, if approved would give China naval access to Indian Ocean’, the author says.
The author notes that all the rich countries in the world have had their time in demographic ‘sweet spot’. Europe was there in the eighteenth century. The United States in the nineteenth. Japan in the early twentieth. China in the 1980s. Now, it is India’s turn, he says.
The book says that with their economies trailing off, the United States, Europe and Japan have only one choice if they are to increase or even maintain their standards of living-they must export to where the growth is today.
“Number one on their list of markets will be India. The big prize in the next 50 years will be Indian customer, not the Indian supplier”, he says.
China will also be a big market but not the first, the book says.
Avery, however, cautions that India today is falling into the colonial trap. Imperial England’s economic policy was simple: Import raw material from the colonies and export manufactured goods from England.
The difference today is India’s ‘raw material’ is services, not goods. The export of these services-outsourcing- represents the single greatest limitation on India’s growth.
Two centuries ago, the United Kingdom used Indian cotton as raw material to run its textile mills and strengthen its industrial base. Today, the US uses Indian IT services to run its software products and strengthen technology base, he says.
The effect, the author says, is the same: a colonial style enrichment of other nations, at India’s expense.
Indo-US relationship drifting: book
.....continued....
Avery says that there was every indication that bilateral relations would continue to strengthen rapidly with Barack Obama replacing George W Bush. After all, Manmohan Singh and Bush had been, for all their success, an unlikely pair: the soft spoken economic professor and the brash cowboy.
“It was tempting to wonder as Obama began his presidency, the author says: “If the cowboy and the professor could produce the nuclear deal, what even greater things can the two professors achieve?”
“The professors have been in charge and it shows. The first three years of the Obama-Singh era have resembled a long-term academic seminar on growing strength of the Indo-American relationship. Somewhere along the way, however, the world stopped listening. For all the words that Singh and Obama put forth about each other and the bilateral relationship, it turns out that they were missing one important thing: action,” the book says.
The strength of the Indo-American relationship depends not on which party is the White House, but instead on the quality of leadership in both, White House and Delhi. The Indo-American relationship under Singh and Obama is drifting.
Happily, it is not yet too late, but there is no time to spare!, the book says.
While Hilary Clinton's declared urgency to attack Iran has overtones of election block politics related to the upcoming US Presidential election in November, it is by no means certain that Nobel Prize Laureate President Obama will prevail, and that she will still be in Office come January 2013. Perhaps, this urgency is fueled by that uncertainty, and the need to make hay while the sun still shines, to set her up for a future run of her own for the Presidency.
Also noteworthy is that dear old Clinton's "democracy" and "human rights" agenda is making some of the intended "beneficiaries" in Arab countries of the Gulf DISTINCTLY NERVOUS.
While Qatar seems to be basking in the aura of security provided by the US fleet stationed there and acting as the designated "Arab Democracy" of the Persian Gulf, the United Arab Emirates has SHUT DOWN and EJECTED an American Funded "democracy group" following similar action against a German organization past week (see article below).
Does this augur a NEW TREND among Arab Countries fearful that "too much democracy" engineered by the US within even longtime allies such as Egypt might upset their own apple carts?
.......................
Clinton: Time running out for diplomacy with Iran
By BRADLEY KLAPPER
April 1, 2012
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made clear Saturday that time is running out for diplomacy over Iran’s nuclear program and said talks aimed at preventing Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon would resume in mid-April.
........
“Our policy is one of prevention, not containment. We are determined to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” America’s top diplomat said.
.......
Clinton said she regretted the decision by the Emirates’ this past week to close down the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute and Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation. She said she expressed her displeasure in a meeting Saturday with the foreign minister and said the U.S. would continue to press its case.
...More
My Comment at LankaWeb.com:
Voice123,
I never said that we should rely on India for Sri Lanka’s security. If you have been reading my comments, you would know that I have been advocating quite the opposite.
We need an array of allies, because as I said before, “countries have no permanent allies, they have only permanent interests”.
The fact that today China is a good friend to Sri Lanka is no guarantee it will be so in the future. Superpowers, just like smaller countries, can be bought with various inducements. China for example is very dependent on exports to the US … which can be used as a lever to change China’s attitude towards Sri Lanka. So it is with all super powers; their needs and priorities change, just as the geopolitical priorities of the US have changed recently to Sri Lanka’s disadvantage
Therefore, we have to be very wary of giving any ONE foreign power total control over us. We must always try to be self sufficient in essentials as far as possible, and have a wide spectrum of allies for both security and trade. The difficulties SL is now facing without oil imports from Iran, is a case in point. The current GOSL clearly appreciates that and is reaching out beyond Europe, America and India to innoculate SL against international blackmail.
Furthermore, while PREVENTING UNWARRANTED INTERFERENCE within our country and DEFENDING IT, we must never go out of our way to UNNECESSARILY PROVOKE other countries. As a small country, trying to improve the lives of our people, we simply can’t afford to do so.
As the ancient Greeks said, and Lord Buddha reiterated, “Pan Metron Ariston” meaning MODERATION in All Things is BEST.
Here is the ANSWER to those STUPID PEOPLE who say the Armed Forces should be REMOVED from the North & East, and allow the COAST of Sri Lanka to be UNDEFENDED!
............
Former LTTE terrorists re-trained in Tamil Nadu committing murders in Sri Lanka
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Apr 02, Colombo: Sri Lanka police intelligence wings have revealed that around 150 terrorists have returned to the island after receiving training in Tamil Nadu, India, a Sinhala daily, Divaina reported Monday.
The Police came to know this information through the questioning of three suspects arrested for the murder of a member of the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), a ruling party constituent partner.
The EPDP member, identified as Ragunathan, a resident of Muttur in Trincomalee district, was found on March 17 with throat slit allegedly by the suspects. They have reportedly displayed a note on the body of the victim saying that they had given death penalty to a traitor and have resumed their work.
The suspects have tried to flee to India after the murder of the EPDP member. However the police have foiled their attempt and arrested them, police said.
Upon interrogation the suspects have claimed that they have been trained in Tamil Nadu and sent to Sri Lanka disguised as fishermen to create mayhem and disturb peace in the North and East.
It has also been revealed that the suspects were former LTTE cadres who have fled to India through sea routes after the end of the war and were hiding in the Tamil Nadu state. They have reportedly received weapons training at a camp in a secret location in Tamil Nadu, the suspects have told the police.
The police are investigating whether the trio is connected to other unsolved murders in the northeast in the last few years.
The suspects have been handed over to the Terrorist Investigation Department (TID) for further investigations.
Country’s division, still the aim of Tiger proxies – GL
Rasika SOMARATHNE
DailyNews.lk
April 02, 2012
External Affairs Minister Prof G L Peiris said although the LTTE has been militarily vanquished in Sri Lanka, its proxies and supporters abroad were using various methods and tactics at achieving their stated objective, which is to divide the country.
“The need of the hour is for the public to have a clear awareness of the campaign and what is being attempted by these anti-national elements. Sri Lankans irrespective of political differences should unite to confront this challenge,” the minister said.
He was speaking at the first of the series of rallies titled Rata Ekata (country united) at the Bogambara grounds in Kandy on Saturday under President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s patronage.
Addressing the gathering, the minister said that LTTE supporters who are carrying out a vigorous campaign internationally to divide Sri Lanka have only changed their methods but not their aims. “The aims remain the same,” he added.
‘The latest episode in this campaign is the situation involving Major General Prasanna Silva attached to the Sri Lankan High Commission in London,” he pointed out.
The minister explained that to bring war crimes charges against Major General Silva, LTTE supporters were now using an unusual method of bringing litigation against British Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary William Hague. “The underlying aim is to deprive Major General Silva of diplomatic immunity and bring charges against him in British courts” he added.
Explaining another such anti – Sri Lankan campaign, Prof Peiris pointed out that in the Channel 4 video there is reference to a chain of command or a command structure in several places.
He added: “The clear purpose behind this is to target the political and military leadership that was responsible for eradicating terrorism from Sri Lanka”. The minister, while stating that all of this could be countered effectively, noted that however it was important for the public to have a clear awareness of the issues at hand.
“To sow the seeds of discord within states like Sri Lanka as was the case in the Arab Spring states, there was a highly sophisticated and orchestrated campaign.
‘There is an attempt to create bitterness and confusion within the country. That was to prepare the ground for direct foreign intervention which comes later,” he added. Prof Peiris explained that in the aftermath of the resolution, certain people with ulterior political motives had tried to create fear in the public mind on various things including the possibility of sanctions. He assured that there was no basis to these fears. However, the minister said that the people should be alert to the motives behind these campaigns.
“If we unite as one, then no foreign force can deprive us of the peace and stability which the country enjoy today,” Prof Peiris said.
Prior to the meeting, a massive crowd marched and gathered in the capital city of the hill country, to show solidarity against foreign interference and attempts to create division in the country.
President Rajapaksa also spoke.
Prime Minister D M Jayaratne, Central Province governor Tikiri Kobbekaduwa, Ministers Maithripala Sirisena, Susil Premajayantha and Patali Champika Ranawaka were also present.
Sri Lanka's first canned fish factory opens tomorrow
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Apr 02, Colombo: Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa is scheduled to declare open the first ever semi-government owned fish canning factory at the Fisheries Corporation premises in Galle in Southern Province on the 3rd of this month.
The cannery, built at a cost of 840 million rupees, is a joint venture of Ceylon Fisheries Corporation (CFC) and Happy Cook Lanka Food Pvt Ltd.
Initially, the factory is expected to produce 10,000 cans per day. The CFC plans to double the daily production capacity later.
In addition to the Galle Fish Canning Factory, two more fish canning factories will be established in Peliyagoda and Mundalama as soon as possible, Minister of Fisheries Dr. Rajitha Senaratne said.
On average Sri Lankans consume around 50,000 fish cans per day and the government spends over Rs. 4 billion annually for canned fish imports.
The government expects to produce 40,000 fish cans per day by the three factories and curtail the imports at least by 30 percent.
Minister Senaratne says that the government will save a massive foreign expenditure that flows out of the country for canned fish and also will be able to provide a high quality product while providing employment for the local youth.
Deployment in development work: Forces help govt save billions
Vijayani Edirisinghe
* Lankan UN peace keepers too add to state coffers
* Confirmed by Auditor General’s report
The government has been able to save billions of rupees, which otherwise would have gone into the coffers of private firms here and abroad, by deploying Security Forces for development work, instead of confining them to barracks in the aftermath of war, The involvement of the county’s Tri - Forces in development work in the aftermath of the conflict began in accordance with a proposal by President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa.
The use of the country’s military for such a productive purpose has been praised in the Government Auditor General’s report for 2011. The country has also earned a significant amount of foreign revenue through remittances made by Security Forces personnel serving in the UN Peace Keeping Force. Around 101 Army officers and over 1,000 soldiers belonging to other ranks serve in the above mission.
The Auditor General’s report also states that the government has been able to save a large sum due to the intervention of Security Forces in the process of clearing landmines in the North and East.
The Auditor General’s report while complementing the Security Forces for their efforts, states that as the Forces derived much satisfaction by liberating the country, they also derive satisfaction through their involvement in the development process where they save billions of rupees for the country’s benefit.
Bajaj Auto falls 2% as Sri Lanka raises import duty
NDTV
April 02, 2012
Bajaj Auto shares fell 2 per cent after Sri Lanka raised import tariff on petrol and diesel powered three wheelers. The import duty on petrol powered three wheelers was raised to 100 per cent against 51 per cent previously. Similarly, duty on diesel powered three wheelers rose to 100 per cent from 61 per cent.
Sri Lanka accounts for about 37 per cent of the three wheeler exports at 9,000 to 10,000 units per month. This is 9 per cent of the company’s revenue and 11 per cent of the operation profit.
Bajaj Auto exported 76,558 three wheelers in the quarter to December 2011.
The BSE Sensex rose 58 points or 0.3 per cent. Bajaj Auto is a component of the 30-share BSE Sensex.
Sri Lanka to grow sufficient chillies to meet the annual requirement
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Mar 31, Colombo: Sri Lanka's Ministry of Agriculture plans to produce enough chillies within the country to meet the needs of the consumers as the government spends Rs. 5.5 billion annually to import chilli.
Under the food production programme the Ministry proposes to cultivate 5,000 hectares of chillies in the Yala season and 12,000 hectares in the Maha Season to make the country self-sufficient in chillies.
Sri Lanka needs 5,000 kg of chili seeds annually but the local producers are not in a position to provide the whole needs of chili seeds, the government says.
The Cabinet has approved a proposal made by the Minister of Agriculture Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, for the Sri Lanka Hadabima Authority to import 500 kg of hybrid chili seeds from India at a total cost of Rs 70 million inclusive of duty and other levies.
According to Department of Agriculture, Sri Lanka's annual requirement of dry chilli is around 43,000 metric tons and the annual production is around 19,000 metric tons.
"Strengthening Relations"? BS!
These are the very same people who pressured the Govt of India into voting against Sri Lanka, coming to impose their will on Sri Lanka now.
Instead of welcoming these SNAKES, they should be declared "Persona non Grata" and DENIED ENTRY.
Sri Lanks should only interact with those officials of India WHO DO NOT ACTIVELY ENGAGE IN ACTIVITIES INIMICAL to Sri Lanka.
These BUGGERS should stay at home ... in India!
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Indian MPs’ visit to strengthen relations
A 14-member Indian all-party delegation from both Houses of Parliament, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, is to visit Sri Lanka after the National New Year holidays.
It will be one of the major political developments between the two countries since bilateral relations took a dip after India voted against Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva last month.
Indo-Sri Lanka relations have been strained over the minority Tamil issue in Sri Lanka, and India's support initially for the secessionist movement in the North and East of the country. In recent times, there is friction over what the Indian side claim is 'historic fishing rights' in the Palk Strait that separates the two countries, but Sri Lanka sees the Indian claim as "poaching". Several fishermen from either side keep getting arrested and locked up in jails on both sides of the Strait.
The Indian parliamentary delegation will be led by Opposition Leader Susmita Swaraj of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and will include MPs from the Tamil Nadu-based Dravida Munnetra Kalazam (DMK), a party headed by the vociferous anti-Sri Lanka former Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi. Incumbent Chief Minister Jayalalitha Jayaram's All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kalazam (AIADMK) has so far not nominated any MP for the visit, but a place is being kept for the party.
The India delegation includes Lok Sabha Opposition Leader Sushma Swaraj (Bharatiya Janata Party); M. Krishnaswamy (Lok Sabha, Congress); N.S.V. Chitthan (Lok Sabha, Congress); Manicka Tagore (Lok Sabha, Congress); Dr. E.M. Sudarsana Natchiappan (Rajya Sabha, Congress); J.D. Seelam (Rajya Sabha, Congress); T.K. Rangarajan (Rajya Sabha, Communist Party of India - M); Dr. Sucharu Ranjan Haldar (Lok Sabha, AITC); M. Venkaiah Naidu (Rajya Sabha, BJP); Pralhad Venkatesh Joshi (Lok Sabha, BJP); Shivanand Tiwari (Rajya Sabha, Janata Dal -U); Shailendra Kumar (Lok Sabha, Samajwadi Party); T.K.S. Elangovan (Lok Sabha, DMK); and Sidhant Mohapatra (Lok Sabha, Biju Janata Dal).
The visit - on the invitation of the Sri Lankan Government was earlier planned for November last year but postponed. Last month, a heated debate took place in the Indian Lower House (Lok Sabha) on Sri Lanka's human rights record which was up for scrutiny at the UNHRC meeting in Geneva. After much deliberation, India eventually voted in support of the US-sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka. Pressure from the ruling Congress party's coalition partner, the DMK, and the AIADMK Chief Minister to vote against Sri Lanka was known to be a contributory factor for the decision.
During the six day visit to the country, the Indian parliamentary delegation is due to meet President Mahinda Rajapaksa, External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris, Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa and Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe. They will visit India-funded projects in the Northern, Eastern, Central and Southern provinces and make a visit to Parliament House at Sri Jayawardanapura-Kotte.
Minister on special mission to New Delhi
By Damith Wickremasekara
Sri Lanka will make a concerted effort to bridge a huge trade deficit with India in addition to improving relations with the regional power after it voted for the US-backed resolution at the United Nations Human Rights council in Geneva last month, a senior cabinet minister said yesterday.
Indian MPs’ visit to strengthen relations
.....continued.....
Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa told the Sunday Times his visit to India later this month would focus on these two and other areas. Mr. Rajapaksa is due to meet India’s External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna and other ministers during the visit which will come after the visit of a 14-member Indian parliamentary delegation to Sri Lanka next week.
“The trade deficit between the two countries is very much against Sri Lanka and one of the main purposes of my visit is to find ways of bridging that gap,” the minister said. He said that last year Sri Lanka imported items to the value of US dollars 5,519 million from India as against exports to India from Sri Lana to the tune of US dollars 519 million. The previous year Sri Lanka imported items to the value of US dollars 4,439 million and exported items to the value of US dollars 474 million.
Mr. Rajapaksa said he also hoped to meet Indian business leaders and invite big investors here.
The minister said he also hoped to improve the strained ties with India, which Sri Lanka regarded as an important political ally.
If the PRICE of Indian aid for Resettlement of the North & East, is SUPERVISION by the very same folks who want to carve out a Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, and pressure India to vote against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC, then say NO to Indian AID!
NO! We don't want such AID from those undermining and destabilizing OUR MOTHERLAND.
DENY THEM ENTRY to Sri Lanka, and LET THEM KNOW WHY!
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Indian parliamentary delegation to visit Sri Lanka after New Year holidays
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Apr 08, Colombo: An all-party delegation of Indian parliament is to arrive in Sri Lanka after the New year holidays to observe the progress of the resettlement and rehabilitation of the Tamils in the Northern Province.
The 15-member multi-party delegation led by Sushma Swaraj, the leader of opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Lok Sabha of the Indian parliament will be visiting the country from April 16 to 21.
Members of the Congress, opposition BJP, Tamil political parties Karunanidhi-led Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam (DMK) and Jayalalithaa-led All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and Left parties will represent the delegation.
The delegation is expected to tour Jaffna and Kilinochchi in the war-battered Northern Province where several development projects funded by the Indian government are progressing to assess the resettlement and other needs of the Tamil people.
The visit had first been suggested in last December in Indian Parliament to send an all-party delegation to Sri Lanka to learn about the condition of Tamils after the Sri Lankan government liberated the North from the Tamil Tiger terrorist control in May 2009.
The delegation was to leave in February this year but due to Assembly elections in five states and other factors, the trip was postponed.
The visit now comes in the wake of India siding with the United States and voting against Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva last month to pass a resolution tabled by the United States calling for the speedy implementation of the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) and investigate the war crime allegations during the war.
Lord Naseby, we are sorry to say, is DEAD WRONG!
NO POWER SHOULD BE DEVOLVED ON ETHNIC BASIS to ANY COMMUNITY.
DEVOLUTION of Power to Ethnic Separatists is a RECIPE FOR SUICIDE for Sri Lanka.
Just Say NO!
REPEAL the 13th Amendment from the Constitution,
DISSOLVE Provincial Councils,
ADOPT Districts DIRECTLY ADMINISTERED by the National GOVT to
PRESERVE the INTEGRITY and SECURITY of all of Sri Lanka's people, irrespective of community.
Please DO NOT Create a PATCWORK QUILT of Apartheid Ethnic Bantustans in Sri Lanka!
ONE Nation, of ONE People, sharing ONE Destiny should be our GOAL.
That GOAL is NOT SERVED by Devolution of Power to Separatists, no matter WHAT FOREIGNERS and demonstrated TRAITORS of the UNP and the TNA say!
NO WAY, JOSE'!
..............
Naseby urges proceeding with devolution process
UNP and TNA confirms support for 13A
By Shamindra Ferdinando
Island.lk
April 7, 2012
The Sri Lankan government should carry out devolution process without any further delay to ensure post-LTTE national reconciliation, declared Lord Naseby PC.
Based on the recommendations made by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), too, called for devolution of powers to the provinces.
Addressing the media at the Colombo Hilton late last week, Naseby who is a member of the House of Lords of the UK parliament and Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Sri Lanka, asserted that it would be a mistake on the part of the victorious GoSL to hold back the process. The failure on the part of the GoSL to move the process would strengthen the hands of those still pursuing Eelam project, he warned.
During his stay here, Naseby met the President, G.L. Peiris, Rauf Hakeem, Rishad Bathiudeen, Vasudeva Nanayakkara, Basil Rajapaksa, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Douglas Devananda, the Bishop of Jaffna, the Governor of the Northern Province, Government Agent of Jaffna and Killinochchi, Jaffna Chamber of Commerce & Industry and UK High Commissioner.
Naseby also toured Hambantota, Galle, Jaffna, Vavuniya and Killinochchi.
While strongly criticizing the UK for throwing its weight behind US-led resolution targeting Sri Lanka at the recently concluded United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, Naseby emphasized that the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was key to post-war reconciliation process. "As I have been both a backbencher in the UK parliament and in Local Government, there is nothing more frustrating than the government deciding on everything. I understand that the 13th Amendment had been debated in parliament and the position of major parties, including the UNP and TNA are known," Naseby said.
The lawmaker also attacked UK media outfit, Channel 4, a section of the Tamil Diaspora and some countries of pursuing unsubstantiated war crimes allegations.
The British lawmaker quoted UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe and TNA leader R. Sampanthan as having told him that their parties supported the implementation of the 13th Amendment. He said that several other UNP MPs, whom he had an opportunity to meet at a meeting in parliament subsequently confirmed Wickremesinghe’s stand.
Naseby urges proceeding with devolution process
UNP and TNA confirms support for 13A
......continued.....
Now that both UNP and TNA had reiterated their commitment to the 13th Amendment, President Mahinda Rajapaksa should go ahead with the devolution process.
Addressing the media ahead of a scheduled meeting with President Rajapaksa, Naseby expressed confidence that the Sri Lankan leader would act courageously and bravely as he did in meeting the threat of LTTE terrorism.
Commenting on the difficulties experienced by the GoSL with the regard to the implementation of the 13th Amendment, Naseby said that police and land powers remained contentious issues, though they needed to be tackled. Naseby asserted that the GoSL would have to start the devolution process at some point and giving Provincial Councils the authority over traffic police duties could be the answer.
Naseby emphasized the importance to the people realizing that the Northern Province wouldn’t receive anything that wasn’t given to other provincial councils.
He stressed the need to implement the 13th Amendment, restoration of civil administration and election to the Northern Provincial Council as critically important issues, which the government needed to address.
The government would have to realize that the TNA’s push for devolution was legitimate and wasn’t something the incumbent administration could turn a blind eye to, the lawmaker said.
My Comment at LankaWeb.com:
Dilrook,
Agreed ... my apologies to you and to aravinda who made those two valuable suggestions: of granting voting rights and resettling the ethnically cleansed in the North & East immediately, which I STRONGLY endorse. NO ONE can say that is "colonization"; it is simply restoration of lost rights of the victims of ethnic cleansing.
On the other hand, as May182009 said, the fact that the Government has not yet adopted a formal Policy of Ethnic Integration and Settlement geared to homogenization of the ethnic population distribution of Sri Lanka, DOES NOT MEAN, it cannot, or should not be done.
In fact, it is simply the only solution to maintaining the integrity of Sri Lanka and future communal harmony. We note that communal disturbances ALWAYS AROSE in Sri Lanka when SEPARATIST DEMANDS were raised that threatened the INTEGRITY of the Nation.
The reason why Ethnic Integration can be implemented and Foreign Powers can be made to UNDERSTAND & ACCEPT it... is that it is DEMONSTRABLY FAIR & JUST. Let me explain.
We all know that the MAJORITY of Tamils live OUTSIDE the North & East among the Sinhala Majority, which they do by exercising their right as citizens of Sri Lanka to settle wherever they choose to live, without let or hindrance either by other communities, or the laws of the land.
Likewise, Sri Lankan citizens of EVERY OTHER COMMUNITY have the inalienable right by law to settle ANYWHERE in the country, a right that the GOSL is duty bound to UPHOLD. To do otherwise would be to DISCRIMINATE against non-Tamil communities on the basis of their race. Therefore, the GOSL should IMMEDIATELY ACT TO ENFORCE THE LAWS AGAINST RACIAL DISCRIMINATION by ENABLING such settlement. In particular, they should dismantle the Thesawalamai laws that are inherently racial, and provide PROTECTION to those who settle in those areas with a preponderant presence of security forces.
No Foreign Power that is for "democracy" or "human rights" can LEGALLY argue against and oppose Ethnic Integration and Settlement based upon STRICT NON-DISCRIMINATION on the basis of RACE.
Note that this kind of Ethnic Integration is FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT from the "colonization" activity practiced by the Israelis in the West Bank. The Israelis do not allow Palestinians from the West Bank to settle within the boundaries of Israel, or to become Israeli citizens, while simultaneously insisting on a right to settle Jewish people within the territory of the West Bank. That kind of one-sided settlement activity is inherently discriminatory, whereas Ethnic Integration and settlement by ALL CITIZENS of Sri Lanka in ANY PART OF THEIR COUNTRY exercising THEIR EQUAL RIGHTS under the law is INHERENTLY JUST & FAIR and is NON-DISCRIMINATORY.
Please note that I do not wish to argue for, or against, the Israeli policies in the West Bank; that is not Sri Lanka's situation or our responsibility to solve. My purpose here is to CLEARLY IDENTIFY the NON-DISCRIMINATORY nature of Settlement of the North & East by Sri Lankan citizens of every community as I propose under a Policy of Ethnic Integration, because the words "colonization" and "settlement" have historical negative connotations.
Finally, the question of why the GOSL should promote such NONDISCRIMINATORY settlement of citizens within its own territory arises.
The answer is that IT IS NECESSARY TO FORESTALL FUTURE SECESSION & PRESERVE THE INTEGRITY of Sri Lanka, communal harmony, and the RIGHTS of ALL citizens of Sri Lanka to enjoy the benefits and resources of their country EQUALLY, not PART BY PART, but as a WHOLE.
My Comment at LankaWeb.com:
.....continued......
That there is such a threat is NOW EMINENTLY CLEAR: There STILL exist RACIST Eelamist Tamils in Sri Lanka who want to impose A DISCRIMINATORY PARTITION OF THE COUNTRY, claiming an EXCLUSIVE Tamils-only area in the North & East, while HAPPILY DEMANDING an EQUAL SHARE outside the North & East as CITIZENS of Sri Lanka. That is INHERENTLY UNFAIR & UNJUST. That if allowed to continue and grow leads to a SEPARATISM which in time, with the aid of equally racist Tamils in India, will lead to SECESSION of the North & EAST of Sri Lanka, and UNION with Tamil Nadu.
Therefore, there is a FUNDAMENTAL NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE at stake here. The best, most permanent, and feasible way to PREVENT those threats to the INTEGRITY of Sri Lanka in a COMPLETELY DEFENSIBLE, PEACEFUL, and NON-DISCRIMINATORY WAY is to ADOPT and IMMEDIATELY IMPLEMENT a National Policy of Ethnic Integration with Settlement of the North & East by non-Tamil citizens of Sri Lanka as its MAIN component of IMMEDIATE RELEVANCE.
While Ethnic Integration is ADOPTED as LAW, and IMPLEMENTED, by the Nation, a DIPLOMATIC and LEGAL OFFENSIVE should be LAUNCHED to defend it and to convince Foreign Powers how & why it is NON-DISCRIMINATORY, and how it SERVES the TOP NATIONAL PRIORITY of preserving and protecting the RIGHTS, LIVES & PROPERTY of ALL citizens of Sri Lanka.
The Leaders of Sri Lanka, and all Patriotic Citizens, must now take the time to LEARN & UNDERSTAND why and how a Policy of Ethnic Integration can be a viable and permanent Solution to Sri Lanka's communal difficulties, and join together to CREATE A POPULAR MOVEMENT TO DEMAND that the GOSL take the necessary steps to implement it IMMEDIATELY.
Why is this MISCREANT ALLOWED TO LEAVE Sri Lanka Scot-free and NOT PROSECUTED for violating Sri Lanka's Immigration Laws?
Why?
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Dissident activist missing in Sri Lanka found, police say
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Apr 10, Colombo: An activist of a newly formed Marxist party in Sri Lanka who wen t missing last Friday have been found safe, Sri Lanka police said Tuesday.
Sri Lanka Marxist party Democratic National Alliance parliamentarian Ajith Kumara told the media this morning that Inspector General of Police N.K. Ilangakoon had informed him in the morning that Premakumar Gunaratnam had been found.
Gunaratnam, an Australian citizen from New South Wales disappeared on April 06 from his home in Kiribathgoda and his family and wife accused the Sri Lankan government's security forces of kidnapping him.
Police Spokesperson Superintendent of Police Ajith Rohana responding to queries by the media said that a person called Noel Mudalige, claimed by the Australian High Commission in Sri Lanka to have been abducted, has been found.
Rohana has noted that Mudalige, alias Gunaratnam is at the Katunayake International Airport awaiting departure to Australia.
According to the police, the person reported missing had been brought to the Dematagoda area by an unknown gang in a van and he had later come to the Colombo Crimes Division (CCD).
The Police have then taken him to the airport under protection.
The Australian High Commission in Colombo yesterday issued a statement requesting for access to one of their citizens Noel Mudalige, who is supposed to have been forcibly removed from No.291, Gemunu Mawatha, Kiribathgoda.
Earlier an Australian media report said the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in a statement has said that they could "confirm the safety" of Gunaratnam who disappeared along with the women's leader of the new Marxist party for which he was to be appointed as the leader.
However, the DFAT has said that "it would be inappropriate to discuss further details at this time."
The report citing Sri Lanka's High Commissioner in Canberra Thisara Samarasinghe said that Gunaratnam has walked into a police station overnight and identified himself.
The newly formed Frontline Socialist Party held its inaugural meeting Monday and Gunaratnam was expected to be declared as the leader of the party at the meeting.
Gunaratnam's wife Champa Somarathna, a migrant doctor of Sri Lanka now living in Australia with their two children, has complained to the government of Australia regarding the alleged abduction of her husband, who she claimed is a citizen of Australia.
The government denied its security forces took him into custody and the Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa had informed the Australian High commissioner in Sri Lanka Ms. Robyn Mudie that there was no record of him arriving in the country when she took the issue up with the Defense Secretary.
Reportedly, Gunaratnam who remained hidden since his arrival in the country last September has used one of the several aliases he has been using to get into the country.
I have long cried in the wilderness for the TNA leaders to be HELD RESPONSIBLE for the TERRORISM & TREASON they practiced and supported for over 30 long years. But, they are still WALKING AROUND Scot-Free among both their Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim victims driving FEAR into their hearts of a triumphant return to power by their old tormentors.
How can Tamils reject their tormentors when they are omnipresent among them, UNPUNISHED & THRIVING, and giving every impression of being POISED to RE-ACQUIRE the dictatorial powers they abused in the past under the late unlamented SunGod? If I were a Tamil living there, I too would KEEP MY HEAD DOWN & DO WHATEVER I AM TOLD ... as anyone interested in survival would. Clearly, the GOSL is failing to free the Tamils of the North & East from their terrist overlords. Clearly, misguided "Reconciliation" that allows criminals to escape is not working to provide security to their former victims.
After the US toppled Saddam Hussain, for the better or for the worse, they BANNED all Baath Party members, BANISHED them from all government employment. and stacked the prisons with all leaders who had collaborated with Saddam Hussain. Similarly, after the fall of Nazi Germany, the Nazi Party was BANNED, and all Nazi officials guilty of crimes were imprisoned. To this day, former Nazis are PROHIBITED from immigrating to the US, and punished and deported from the US if they are discovered. That is how the members of criminal organization should be and must be treated.
Why then, should the CRIMINALS & TRAITORS of the TNA with the blood of over 100,000 innocent Sri Lankan people on their hands, not be PROSECUTED, CONVICTED and SENTENCED to HARD-LABOR in PRISON? Why?
We, in Sri Lanka, have failed this acid test in Crime & Punishment by failing to hold the TNA ACCOUNTABLE.
Hundreds of thousands of Our honoured DEAD, WOUNDED, ORPHANED & ETHNICALLY CLEANSED Citizens cry out for justice. Why is the GOSL not heeding their cries?
These TNA Criminals, NOW EMBOLDENED by the FAILURE TO PUNISH THEM, are FRANTICALLY ATTEMPTING TO RESURRECT the violence and EVILS of their RECENT PAST, and REND ASUNDER our beloved Motherland.
It is NOT RECONCILIATION with MURDERERS that we need; far from it. It is REHABILITATION of victims, RECONSTRUCTION of our destroyed society, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT to uplift the people and usher in a Brave New Age, and most importantly, ENFORCEMENT of LAW, ORDER & SECURITY to restore to the Citizens of Sri Lanka, once again, their inalienable inherent birthright to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
ONE Nation, of ONE People, sharing ONE Destiny should be our PERMANENT SHINING goal.
"On behalf of President Obama and the people of the United States, I am delighted to send best wishes to Sri Lankans around the world as you celebrate Sinhala and Tamil New Year." says Hillary Clinton, who no doubt will follow this up with a few additional WAR CRIMES resolutions against Sri Lanka to promote her goodwill towards us.
Sanctimonious Hypocrite!
The $-value of ALL direct US Aid to Sri Lanka in 2011 was less than $25 million, compared to over $2500 million from China. The BULK of that $25 million was for pseudo-political activities designed to promote the US agenda and destabilize the country.
The primary utility of the US to Sri Lanka was as a MARKET for Sri Lankan products, such as textiles.
When the US is prepared to help Sri Lanka in a SUBSTANTIAL & MEANINGFUL WAY, building universities and technical schools, renewable energy power plants, advanced medical centers, state-of-the art airports, expressways, canals, dams and reservoirs, high technology manufacturing plants, etc as CHINA does, abandoning the current FOCUS on setting up 5th columns to UNDERMINE Sri Lanka from within, and demolish the peace and security we have achieved at great cost in lives and treasure ... then we should talk again.
Until then, Sri Lanka should BLOCK all moves by the US to destabilize Sri Lanka under the cover of promoting "democracy", and "human rights", through activities of USAID, the Peace Corps, and support to politically oriented NGOs.
Can US Policies change? Yes, they can, if a new US Govt without the likes of Hillary Clinton at the helm arises after the November, 2012 Presidential elections.
During the George W. Bush era, we had neoconservative ideologues and born-again evangelists beating the drums of war against imaginary axes-of-evil. Now, we have liberal ideologues destabilizing emerging nations under the pretext of promoting democracy and human rights. The net result is the same: the destruction of central authority in developing nations, the pitting of their constituents communities against each other, and the transfer of power to undemocratic extremists, setting back their economic progress by perhaps a decade or two, and contrary to their expectations, the frustration of neocolonialist hopes that they can profit from the rise of pro-Western puppet regimes.
It is gradually beginning to dawn on many American citizens that US interference in the internal affairs of many countries across the globe, under various PRETEXTS including "nuclear security", "democracy" and "human rights", is not yielding the desired results, but is only sowing the wind with the seeds of new enmities that may reap a painful whirlwind for the United States in the not too distant future.
It is time for the United States to STOP its aggressive interventions in foreign countries, and instead, assist them economically to uplift their peoples .... like China does. Failure to do so, will only yield UNSUSTAINABLE commitments to conflicts that could BANKRUPT the United States.
........
US looking forward to support Sri Lanka's national reconciliation and development
Comment at LankaWeb.com
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Fran Diaz,
I totally agree with your comment on the need to deploy tea-plucking machines on our tea estates, not only to the INCREASE the VERY LOW PRODUCTIVITY of the tea pluckers, but also to give them a means of EARNING MORE, while avoiding the CALAMITOUS IMPORTATION of foreign workers as the British Planters did in our colonial past.
As you say, NO FOREIGN WORKERS from Tamil Nadu should be imported to Sri Lanka. That will only condemn them also to a poverty stricken life as a disaffected underclass in Sri Lanka, but will also INCREASE the RANKS of DISAFFECTED Tamils calling for separatism in the future.
Instead of importing labor, let us INCREASE THE INCOME of the tea estates through increases in PRODUCTIVITY, and thereby increase THE EARNINGS of our EXISTING labor force to such an extent that people unwilling to pluck tea at current rates of income would enter the labor force as well.
As a part owner of a family Tea Estate in Sri Lanka that we are striving to convert into MODEL OPERATION for others to emulate, I APPLAUD your suggestions. We, like most other Tea Estates in Sri Lanka, are beset by a shortage of labor and labor costs that outstrip the income from tea, leading to an inability to improve the available facilities (such as homes, and medical dispensaries) to benefit the workers. Without increasing income and cutting costs, we cannot provide those benefits. Therefore, I have been looking into MECHANIZATION as a means of improving the PRODUCTIVITY of our work force, and have designed and built several machines by modifying existing garden tools, for a variety of operations on the estate.
Tea plucking is not the only process requiring mechanization. Plucking, Pruning, Weeding, Spraying, Fertilizing, Erosion Control, and even Watering from tube wells during droughts, need to be mechanized. I have modified and adapted a few gardening tools available in the US for this purpose, but they are not entirely satisfactory. I have also built wind and mini-hydro turbines to generate electricity on this land.
Therefore, I was AMAZED to find the vast array of POWER TOOLS designed for these very purposes at the Link YOU provided. I had searched the internet before, but found very little information on such tools. I must have used the wrong search criteria.
Many thanks to you for your great suggestions and information, on both the dangers of importing foreign workers AGAIN to Sri Lanka, and the need to enhance the capabilities of those we already have through mechanization.
Please keep thinking along these lines that address two key security and quality-of-life issues affecting the people of Sri Lanka.
My Comment at LankaWeb.com
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Only a few years ago, Jayalalitha akka was hiding from LTTE death threats. She was begging for bodyguards from Karunanidhi who was only too happy to ignore her abject pleas.
Clearly, she has lost her short term memory due to advanced Alzheimers and plotical sycophants worshiping the hem of her purple saree, now that those killers have been taken care of by the MR-GOSL and she can emerge from hiding to become Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.
Jayalalitha is now pandering to the rump-LTTE in TN to gain popularity by beating the drums of Tamil Racism. She thinks she can control the violent holocaust she will help unleash, and the murderers who will displace her. I don't think she has ANY IDEA of what it takes to cope with those LTTE murderers that we learned the hard way.
I fully expect Jayalalitha to end up wearing a fashionable glass eye-ball in the not too distant future, just like CBK did … if she is lucky enough to survive the initial bomb blast.
Those who try to ride terrorism to political power, usually end up being consumed by it.
“Sri Lanka should be allowed to find its own long term and permanent solution”
By Panduka Senanayake
Times of Oman
April 14, 2012
“Sri Lanka is a sovereign country and should be allowed to find its own long term and permanent solution to its ethnic problem without outsiders, forcing their will on the country,” said Veterinary Surgeon Noel Nadesan of Victoria commenting on the 23 March passage through the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva of the resolution on “Promoting reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka.
Mr.Nadesan, from Sri Lanka’s ethnic minority Tamil community migrated to Australia in early 1987 and operates a successful veterinary practise. He edited and published a Tamil fortnightly newspaper and has written four books, one of which has been translated into English, on his experiences as a vet.
Copies of his newspaper had been burnt and he had been threatened over his moderate views by detractors. Following the conclusion of Sri Lanka’s conflict, Mr.Nadesan has built a small hospital at his own expense in the island of Eluvaitivu, his birthplace, in the country’s north.
He was confident of Sri Lanka finding its own home grown solution to the problem and said the Sri Lanka government has the power and the mandate from the people to do it. He said that the government has to have a proper long term plan on devolution and decentralisation of power, economy and culture.
He pointed out that the UNHRC’s resolution would turn out to be counter-productive because the US which brought the resolution, and its supporters were trying to foist their own solution on Sri Lanka.
He said that placing a time frame during which the country has to show to UNHRC, the progress it has made on implementing steps on accountability and reconciliation indicated a lack of trust on the Lanka government.
"Further, this would be considered a high handed act by some of the Sinhala nationalists. Since they cannot take on the mighty USA, they will hold the Tamils in the island responsible for this. Instead of bringing the two communities closer, this would drive the wedge further between them, “he said.
Asked if the time frame was placed to prevent the SL government from shirking its responsibilities and avoid accountability Mr.Nadesan was derisive. “It is a joke for America of all countries to speak of accountability.
They do not wish to be accountable and do not sign the international covenants that would hold their soldiers responsible for violations of human rights in action around the globe; but here they want to subject a small country, which fought a 30 year conflict against terrorism, accountable,” he said.
Of the accusation of `war crimes’ leveled against soldiers, Mr.Nadesan said that war brutalised people and this happened in all wars and all involved parties were responsible for the escalation of violence throughout the years . While it is difficult for the people affected, we should move on, he said.
“Sri Lanka should be allowed to find its own long term and permanent solution”
.....continued .....
However, highlighting some action of the soldiers towards the end of the fighting by some groups with vested interest was laughable he said.
If these groups cared at all, they should have done so from the beginning he said pointing out the attack and killing of prisoners at a Sri Lankan jail in 1987. There were many such incidents but none of these champions of human rights spoke out then, he pointed out.
Stating that the country’s own action on the Lessons Learnt and Re-conciliation Committee (LLARC) report to find solutions for a home grown solution was progressing he pointed out the rehabilitation and de-mining activities in the north-east have progressed very well.
He pointed out that the Tamil people of Sri Lanka will have to learn to live with the 81 percent of majority Sinhalese. Any one from outside who does not intend living in the country should not try to force a solution on that country.
Supporters of the resolution should not only talk about it but put money on the table and assist Sri Lanka to develop he said.
Latin America rebels against Obama over Cuba
By Andrew Cawthorne and Brian Ellsworth
April 15, 2012
CARTAGENA, Colombia (Reuters) - Unprecedented Latin American opposition to U.S. sanctions on Cuba left President Barack Obama isolated at a summit on Sunday and illustrated Washington's declining influence in a region being aggressively courted by China.
Sri Lanka defence intelligence traces 428 LTTE schools in Europe
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
May 05, Colombo: Sri Lanka defence intelligence has found that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) operate 428 schools in the main countries of Europe, reports Sinhala daily Lankadeepa.
According to the report these schools, established in Germany, Switzerland, France, Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, provide education to 22,500 students across the Europe.
Germany has the highest number of such schools with 145 and there are 133 schools in Switzerland, and 65 schools in Denmark.
The report says that Eelam Tamil separatism is taught in these schools in the guise of teaching Tamil language and culture.
Sri Lanka's defense authorities have taken steps to complain to the authorities of the countries where such schools are established.
Lies, More Lies and Monstrous Lies to CRUCIFY Sri Lanka.
The UNDP is there to CLEAR MINES but to PLANT MORE MINES against Sri Lanka.
Kick the UNDP out of Sri Lanka ... they are there to UNDERMINE & DESTABILIZE and TRANSFORM Sri Lanka
in to another SOMALIA!
KICK THEM OUT!
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Army asks for information; UNDP mum on cluster ‘ammo’ recovery claim
*Interested parties trying to drag-on mine clearing operations?
By Shamindra Ferdinando
Island.lk
May 4, 2012, 10:21 pm
In spite of claiming to have found cluster ammunition in Puthukudiruppu late last month, the UNDP is yet to provide conclusive evidence to justify its claim.
Authoritative sources yesterday told The Island that the army was ready to launch a de-mining operation if the UNDP revealed the specific area, where the detection of cluster ammunition was claimed to have been made by a private NGO engaged in de-mining operations, under the auspices of the UNDP.
Responding to a query, sources said that the UNDP claim remained a mystery in view of its failure to either allow the army to talk with the de-miner, who had made the detection and the person who provided several photographs of the recovered partly buried ‘ammo’. An official said that those responsible for de-mining operations carried out by NGOs had been silent and were somewhat reluctant to assist the inquiry.
Although the UNDP hadn’t been helpful, the military pointed out that of the nine private de-mining groups deployed in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, only two, namely, Swiss Foundation for Mine Action (FSD) and the British HALO Trust were operative in the Puthukudirippu area.
Sources said that the two NGOs could help the army to locate the site, where the alleged detection was made.
Asked whether the military would search Puthukudirippu on its own, a senior official said that approximately 16 square kms remained to be cleared in the area, where the alleged recovery of cluster ammunition was made. He said that the army was in the process of probing the area to ascertain the situation.
Sources said that as army engineers were responsible for blasting of all explosive devices recovered and defused by NGOs in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. The NGO responsible for the alleged detection of cluster ammunition couldn’t have taken care of it, even if it wanted to do so. None of the NGOs had been cleared to use explosives, he said, emphasizing the pivotal importance of the government inquiring into the initial UNDP claim.
At the conclusion of the conflict in May, three years ago, the National Mine Action project identified 2,061 square kms for mine clearing operations. "The military and NGOs have so far cleared about 1,940 square kms, though they never found evidence, at least to suggest the use of cluster ammunition," sources said.
They said that mine clearing operations in residential areas would come to an end soon and clearing the remaining jungle areas could take about another one year. There was also suspicion some might attempt to prolong ongoing mine clearing operations here. The operation was obviously coming to an end much earlier than expected, sources said, warning the authorities to remain on alert to thwart possible attempts to cause fresh turmoil. Sources pointed out that the UNDP here proposed that those engaged in de-mining operations should be given training in tackling cluster ammunition in the wake of the alleged recovery.
These Indian MPs should NEVER HAVE BEEN allowed to conduct "inspections" in Sri Lanka of any kind.
C an Sri Lanka undertake "inspections" in Kashmir on behalf of the Sri Lankan Muslim community?
Can Sri Lanka demand Devolution of Exclusive Political Power to the Muslims of Kashmir excluding the rights of the all citizens of India belonging to its ethnic and religious communities?
The answers is NO!
NEVER AGAIN SHOULD WE DILUTE the sovereignty of Sri Lanka by allowing Foreign Inspections.
Do as others like the US and India do; say NO to FOREIGN INTERFERENCE in Sri Lanka's INTERNAL MATTERS.
Keep these BLOODY HYPOCRITES OUT!
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Indian parliamentary delegation submit report on Sri Lanka to PM
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
May 04, New Delhi: The Indian parliamentary delegation visited Sri Lanka last month has submitted their report on the situation regarding the ethnic Tamils to the Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh today at the Parliament House in New Delhi.
The 12-member multi-party delegation led by the Opposition Leader of the Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj visited Sri Lanka from April 16 to April 21 to assess the progress of the resettlement and rehabilitation processes of the Tamils in Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka.
Swaraj has met the Indian PM today at the Parliament House and briefed Dr. Singh about their five-day visit to Sri Lanka that included tours in the North, East and central plantations where the Indian-origin Tamils mainly live.
The Opposition Leader has told the PM that Sri Lanka's major Tamil party, Tamil National Alliance wants dignified rights and living conditions for the Tamil minority within a unitary state.
She has told the Indian PM that Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa needed to persuade the TNA to join the Parliamentary Select Committee to find a political solution to address the grievances of Tamils.
The Prime Minister has assured that India will solidly stand behind the Tamils in Sri Lanka to attain a political settlement to the national question.
The delegation which had extensive discussions with Sri Lankan government ministers, the Leader of the Opposition, key leaders of major political parties, parliamentarians and representatives of civil society and travelled to different parts of the country focusing on the North and the East has told the Dr. Singh the Sri Lankan government should take measures to return the land taken away from Tamils during the war.
They have told the PM that Sri Lankan Army should reduce their presence in the civilian areas and the government should employ more Tamils into the police service.
The delegation in their report has said that the Sri Lankan government needs to conduct elections in the North soon and hand over duties to civil administration.
Ms. Swaraj has also emphasized that the Sri Lankan government should implement the 13th Amendment to devolve powers to Tamil-dominated North and East provinces.
The delegation has suggested to the PM sending teachers and doctors from Tamil Nadu as there is a shortage of those professionals in Sri Lanka's Northern Province.
Indian Tamils migrating to Sri Lanka, under the guise of "SPOUSES" ...
"one returnee from the Jaffna district who left in the mid 1980s with five children has now returned with five full families"
.... and so the INFLUX OF INDIAN TAMILS into Sri Lanka .... CONTINUES under another pretext .... Oh My God!
If it is so bad in Sri Lanka cpompared to Tamil Nadu, why do they choose to come back at all?
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Refugees Dream of Return, Come Home to Nightmare
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
May 04 (RW) COLOMBO- Krishnaveni Nakkeeran has fled the country of her birth twice and returned twice in the last two decades. The 36-year-old mother of four from the northern Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lanka first fled the bloody civil war to India when she was just 16 years old in 1990.
Her family mistakenly believed it was safe to return five years later and was forced to flee yet again in 1998. She returned again in 2010, barely a year after government forces had defeated the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009, accompanied by her family. The war may have ended, but a harsh reality awaits those like Nakkeeran, returning after years spent in India. "Life has been hard, very hard, we probably work double (here) what we did in India," she told IPS.
Tens of thousands of Sri Lankans, almost all of them from the minority Tamil community, fled to neighbouring India during the island�s three decades of civil conflict. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), there are over 100,000 Sri Lankan refugees in India, out of which roughly 68,000 live in 112 camps in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Since the war�s end in May 2009, some of these have begun to return. Last year UNHCR facilitated the return of over 1,700 refugees to the island.
This year has seen a drop of around 30 percent in the number of returning citizens; the latest figures released by the U.N. refugee agency said that 408 persons returned during the first quarter of 2012, compared to 597 during the corresponding period in 2011.
The UNHCR office in Sri Lanka has attributed the drop to the suspension of a ferry service between South India and Sri Lanka, which had allowed for cheaper passage and the chance to bring back more household material.
However, rights groups working with returnees and those still remaining in India speculate that the hard grind awaiting exiles in their old homeland might explain the reduced rate of return.
This is especially true of those returning to the Vanni, a vast swath of land in Sri Lanka's northern province that weathered the worst excesses of the war.
"They have to start life all over again. During the years of absence, so much has changed in Sri Lanka that it is a new life in a new country that they come back to," Sinnathambi Suriyakumari, Sri Lanka's head of the Organisation for Eelam Refugee Rehabilitation (OfERR), that has worked in India and Sri Lanka since 1983, told IPS.
She added that the biggest problem for the returnees is starting from scratch. While there are programmes aimed at assisting internally displaced persons (IDPs) returning to their homes in the former war zone, there is no special programme for those returning from India.
"This is where the problem starts, these people feel as if they are returning to an alien land, especially those without extended family here," Suriyakumari said.
UNHCR's representative in Sri Lanka, Michael Zwack, told IPS that returning refugees lacked proper documentation like identity cards, land deeds and birth certificates that they lost during their flight from the country decades ago. The lack of such documentation is a serious bureaucratic hassle.
Refugees Dream of Return, Come Home to Nightmare
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The returnees, who are given a standard reintegration grant, are faced with multiple other problems that need special attention.
"Shelter is another key challenge facing refugees returning to former conflict areas, as they need assistance with carrying out repairs or rebuilding homes that were damaged," Zwack said.
Of the roughly 100,000 houses that were destroyed during the final phase of the war, only 16,000 had been built as of February 2012 according to the latest U.N. figures, which also revealed that reconstruction commitments only extend to the building or repair of 35,000 homes.
Meanwhile, the Indian government is expected to commence building 40,000 houses in the region by mid-2012.
The displacement of thousands of families, be they IDPs or exiles in India, has created a serious land issue in the Vanni. "Many land owners in the Vanni still find it difficult to claim ownership over their property, and land issues have become a serious problem," Saroja Sivachandran, head of the Jaffna- based Centre for Women and Development, told IPS.
The problem of land and housing is worse for those returning from India, since people who fled as individuals tend to return with families in tow, according to Suriyakumari.
She said one returnee from the Jaffna district who left in the mid 1980s with five children has now returned with five full families. "All the children have their own families, and now all of them live on this tiny plot of land."
Returnees like Nakkeeran are also forced to confront the phenomenon of squatters, people who have lived on other'ss land for decades.
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