Violations increased in Killinochchi
November 19—The Regional Coordinator of the Human Rights Commission, Jaffna stated that human rights violations is on increase in Killinochchi. He further stated
that government officials are violating the rights of the people due to land issues and replacement. He called on the Grama Sevekas of the district to take action towards such violations.
Protest concerning the disappeared in Jaffna
NOVEMBER 15—All University Student Union organized a protest concerning the disappeared and the detained in Jaffna, under the theme ‘We are Sri Lankans’.
Disappearances continue - Rev. Suwamippillai
NOVEMBER 04—Rev. Kingsley Suwamippillai stated that disappearances are taking place even after the war and some people are being kidnapped at gunpoint. He furthermore stated that these should be prevented. During the war most of the people were arrested by the army on suspicion and there has been no information about them.
Former LTTE cadres will be released soon
OCTOBER 27— The Commissioner for Rehabilitation Brig. Suthantha Ranasinha during an interview to ‘Sudaroli’ mentioned that Former LTTE female cadres who are being rehabilitated will be handed over to their parents after the GCE O/L examination. The majority of LTTE who surrendered at the latter part of the war have been rehabilitated and released.
Majority of the surrendees to be released
OCTOBER 01—The Minister of rehabilitation Mr. D.U. Gunesekara stated that apart from the LTTE members who directly very much involved in terrorist activities, others would be released soon. He further mentioned that his goal is reuniting the detainees with their families. He mention that he would not only rehabilitate detainees but also rehabilitate IDPs in order to integrate with society and coexist peacefully.
No media freedom in Sri Lanka—Tissanayakam
November 19—The internationally recognized journalist J.S.Tissanayakam stated that media freedom has died in Sri Lanka. He mentioned this during an interview to Reporters without the Borders. He further added that Sri Lankan journalists are threatened or assassinated by the government directly or indirectly. Mr. Tissanayakam was indicted on the allegations of aiding and abating terrorism and later convicted with 20 years rigorous imprisonment. Thereafter, he was granted presidential pardon.
Government protests over Tamilchelvan’s statue
NOVEMBER 03—The External Affairs Ministry has made the government’s objections for erecting the statue of former LTTE political wing leader S.P.Tamilchelvan in France. The Ministry Spokesman Bandula Jayasekara said the government had expressed its clear dismay protested regarding the issue through the Sri Lankan Embassy in France. He added “But it was on a private land”. However, he said that the ministry would follow up on the matter.
Highest number of illegal prisons in Sri Lanka
OCTOBER 04—The highest number of illegal prisons are in Sri Lanka and 8000 political prisoners are being detained, stated Prof. Kumar David, Member of the University Lecturers for Democracy (ULD) referring to the statement of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). He added that Tamil youth were being detained without any legal procedure. He also mentioned that the well known Former General Sarath Fonseka is one of the political prisoners
Detained for several years due to suspicion
OCTOBER 03—TNA Minister P. Ariyanentheran stated that Tamil detainees in Batticoloa are agitated of the fact that most of the former LTTE members who were directly or indirectly involved with activities are being released and moving about freely. Some are even holding high positions in the Government. But innocent civilians like them are caught and detained for several years without any inquiry. Mr. P. Ariyanentheran mentioned that he would discuss this matter with President and also mentioned about the shortage of water in Prison.
Kilinochchi rape case
In 2011 the Kilinochchi rape case was taken up on January and February once, the non summary inquiry has ended and the case will be moved to the Jaffna High Court.
When the case was taken up at the Kilinochchi Magistrate's Court on October 25, the 5th witness was not present and the case was postponed to November 10, 2010.
On October 11, primary inquiry was carried out with the main witness who is the victim herself and her eldest son. Magistrate ordered summons to the fifth witness. Senior Counsel Ms. Koswatta appearing on behalf of the suspects made a submission requesting bail for them. Senior Counsel Mr. K.S. Ratnavale, appearing on behalf of the victim made a submission to prevent granting bail. The Magistrate fixed October 20 to decide on granting bail.
When the case was taken up on September 21, where it was merely calling date; counsels appearing on behalf of the victim requested to postpone the primary inquiry, due to the absence of their Senior Counsel and made a submission requesting to refuse bail for the suspects. Senior Counsel Ms. Koswatta appearing on behalf of the suspects expressed her concern for not granting bail and postponing the primary inquiry despite the presence of the translator. The Magistrate, Mr. Sivakumar requested the Ms. Koswatta to choose the next date. The date for the primary inquiry was fixed as September 30.
The two women were raped and abused in the Visvamadu area-- an area under post war resettlement plan. The victim aged 22, is a mother of two. A group of army personnel in uniform and civil visited the victim’s house in the morning of June 6, 2010 and on the same afternoon she was raped and her brother was assaulted by two army personnel.
Two women were raped and abused in the Visvamadu area. This is an area under post war resettlement plan. The victim aged 22, is a mother of two. A group of army personnel in uniform and civil visited the victim’s house in the morning of June 6, 2010 and on the same afternoon the she was raped and her brother was assaulted by two army personnel. Meanwhile, another army cadre too was involved in an unnatural act. Mankulam Police carried out the initial investigation where statements from the victim’s two children were recorded and six army personnel including a corporal were taken into custody for rape and sexual abuse
CHRD made legal representation on behalf of the two victims. CHRD retained senior counsel Mr. K.S. Ratnavale, together with attorneys-at-law Mr. Lakashan Dias, Ms. Mangaleshwary Shanker, and Mr. Celestine Stanislaus.
The accused were produced in the Kilinochchi Magistrate Court on June 14, 28 and July 13. In the identification parade held on June 14, four accused were identified by the victims. The Kilinochchi Magistrate Mr. Sivakumaran released the remaining two accused as there were no charges against them. On June 28, the defense counsel filed bail applications on behalf of the suspects. On July 13, the Magistrate Court Judge Mr. Sivakumaran refused bail following the objection raised by senior counsel Mr. Ratnavale appearing on behalf of the victims.
Currently investigations are being carried out by the Kilinochchi Police. The next hearing will be on July 27, 2010 and CHRD will continue to represent the victims.
Sarah Malanie Perera 38, was arrested on March 19, 2010 by the Police, over a book she wrote called ‘From Darkness to Light’ which described her conversion to Islam. She was reported to police by an Aramex employee and has been accused of conducting "anti-state" activities and having links to Islamic militants, which she firmly denies.
Ms Perera has been charged under two sections of a law that makes it illegal to offend others by insulting their religion.
The first section carries a maximum one-year jail sentence, while the second section includes a maximum penalty of up to two years in jail and both include fines if convicted.
Mr. Lakshan Dias, attorney at law is appearing for the victim on behalf of CHRD and has forwarded the case to Sri Lanka's Attorney General in the meantime for review.
Ms Perera was detained after she tried to send copies of her literature to Bahrain when Sri Lankan authorities received a complaint that the book was offensive to Buddhists. However, she was released from prison last month after paying bail of 50,000 Sri Lankan rupees.
New photos of war crimes in Sri Lanka emerged
Al Jazeera has obtained photographs that appear to show Sri Lankan army soldiers abusing Tamil civilians in the final days of the Sri Lankan civil war. The pictures show various graphic scenes, with dead bodies blindfolded and hands bound, shot through the head and mounds of bodies on the back of a farmer's trailer.It is claimed that the photos were taken in the closing months of the country’s long-running conflict that ended 18 months ago.
One of the photos shows a line of bodies, including what is believed to be the body of the son of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the rebel group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or Tamil Tigers, that was defeated in the civil war. Another photo shows the naked body of a young woman and the body of a boy, perhaps in his early teens.
Authenticity unverified
It is not possible to verify the authenticity of the images that were obtained by Al Jazeera from Tamil contacts who said the photos were handed over by someone from the Sri Lankan military. It is unclear why it has taken so long from them to surface.
The photos came to light just after Gamini Lakshman Peiris, the Sri Lankan minister of external affairs, had visited London to deliver a speech at the International Institute of Strategic Studies. Ethnic Tamil groups had vowed to protest outside the venue. The Sri Lankan government has always denied allegations of war crimes and promised to take action if it finds evidence of atrocities.
Rajiva Wijesinha, a Sri Lankan MP who is also a former secretary of the country's human rights ministry, told Al Jazeera that the country has launched an "independent" inquiry into the photos of the alleged massacre. "We have always said that any allegation will be investigated. We believe that our inquiry going on is perfectly independent."
But Dr Sam Pari, a spokeswoman for the Australian Tamil Congress, says there has to foreign pressure on the Sri Lankan government to allow an international independent investigation into the atrocity."The responsibility of pressuring Sri Lanka to allow an international independent investigation falls upon the international governments that currently deal with Sri Lanka in the form of trade, tourism etc," she told Al Jazeera in an interview."So if these governments start placing trade sanctions and travel bans on Sri Lanka, then Sri Lanka will be forced to allow an international investigation into war crimes."
In May, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Sri Lankan president, said that his government will not punish the Sri Lankan army for "defeating terrorism"."[…] If the international community wants to punish Sri Lanka for defeating terrorism, I'm not for that," Rajapaksa said.Sri Lanka has repeatedly rejected international calls for an independent inquiry into the war against the Tamil Tigers, in which the UN estimates at least 7,000 Tamil civilians were killed.
Other estimates suggest the figure could be as high as 20,000 and the inference is that many were killed by government shelling.
'Whitewash'
Sri Lanka has instead set up its own inquiry called the "Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission" (LLRC), which critics say is a whitewash.Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have refused to participate in the inquiry, stating that it does not meet international standards for independent and impartial inquiries.
The human rights organisations say that the new photographic evidence warrants an independent investigation. Some of the scenery in the photos is similar to that in video material leaked to the international media which seems to show the execution of Tamil Tiger fighters by Sri Lankan soldiers.
Again the Sri Lankan government denied the military carried out the executions, however, after detailed examination, professor Philip Alston, the UN’s former special rapporteur to Sri Lanka, said he believes the video is genuine.
Since the end of the war in May last year, no one from the military has been charged with any offence and no evidence has emerged from the government inquiries. Critics say the Sri Lankan government is writing its own history.
For more than 25 years, the Tamil Tigers waged a secessionist campaign in Sri Lanka that led to it being designated a terrorist organisation by 32 countries.At one stage in the conflict 300,000 displaced Tamil civilians languished in makeshift camps.
According to the latest figures there are some 35,000 Tamils left in government camps. There are more than two million Tamils estimated to be in Sri Lanka.Emergency powers are still in force; there is a heavy military presence in Tamil areas and more and more Tamils are leaving the country.
Rights groups blame Sri Lanka over detentions
The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) says Sri Lanka has failed to adhere to international law in detaining suspected Tamil Tigers.
The watchdog says the detention of nearly 8,000 rebel suspects for months without a trial is perhaps "the largest mass detention in the world". It urges Sri Lanka's donors and the UN to urge Colombo to improve its human rights situation. It also questions the reasons for continuing the state of emergency. The human rights watchdog says there is a "legal vacuum" over the detention of former Tamil Tiger "surrenders". There has so far been no response to the report from the Sri Lankan government.
The ICJ says that the donor support for Sri Lanka "must be provided only on condition of compliance with international law and standards, or else risk complicity in a policy of systematic mass arbitrary detention".
The ICJ however recognized the progress made in terms of releasing displaced people from camps and in releasing 565 former child soldiers after rehabilitation. The government argues that the threat posed by the Tamil Tigers still exists despite their military victory over them in May 2009.
It says it is important to keep the state of emergency until the process of vetting them is over. Addressing the UN General Assembly last week, President Mahinda Rajapaksa called for a rethink of international rules governing the conduct of war.
But the watchdog questions the reasons for maintaining emergency regulations and the Preventing of Terrorism Act (PTA). "Conditions on the ground cannot be considered to give rise to a threat to the life of the nation so far as to justify a state of emergency," the ICJ said. - BBC
Sri Lanka forces blamed for most civilian deaths
NEW DELHI — Tens of thousands of Tamil civilians died in the last, bloody months of Sri Lanka’s civil war, the International Crisis Group said in an investigative report to be released Monday, most of them as a result of government shelling of areas that were supposed to be safe zones.
The report, which cites witness testimony, satellite images, documents and other evidence, calls for a wide-reaching international investigation into what it calls atrocities committed in the last months of the Sri Lankan government’s war against the Tamil Tiger insurgency.
The war ended a year ago, when the Tigers’ top leadership was killed on a narrow strand of beach in northeastern Sri Lanka, capping a two-decade armed struggle by a group that pioneered some of the ugliest insurgent tactics in the world, including female suicide bombers and child soldiers.
Because the government barred independent journalists and most humanitarian workers from the war zone, the death toll of the final months of fighting, when at least 300,000 Tamil civilians were pinned down on a beach, caught between the rebels and government forces, is not known.
United Nations workers counted about 7,000 dead in the last weeks of April, just before the last phase of the fighting, but diplomats, aid workers and human rights activists have long argued that those figures far underestimated the dead and did not include the final weeks of battle. Government officials, meanwhile, have repeatedly denied singling out civilians, and have said that the total number of people killed is much lower.
Sri Lankan officials declined to comment on the report, saying they had not yet seen it.
The report by the Crisis Group, an advocacy organization based in Brussels and Washington that seeks to resolve and prevent armed conflicts, said that despite its promises to protect civilians and aid workers as it made its assault on the Tigers, the Sri Lankan government had bombed relentlessly in areas where it knew unarmed people were present.
“Evidence gathered by Crisis Group provides reasonable grounds to believe that during these months the security forces intentionally and repeatedly shelled civilians, hospitals and humanitarian operations,” the report said. “It also provides reason to believe that senior government and military officials were aware of the massive civilian casualties due to the security forces’ attacks, but failed to protect the civilian population as they were obliged to under the laws of war.”
The report said that the insurgents, known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, also committed atrocities, particularly in choosing to corral as many people as possible around its fighters, hoping to maximize civilian casualties and force international intervention.
“Their calculation, ultimately an incorrect one, was that escalating civilian casualties would eventually get the attention of the international community to broker a cease-fire so the L.T.T.E. could regroup or perhaps enter negotiations,” the report said, using initials the Tamil Tigers are also known by.
Instead, the Sri Lankan government pressed the rebels to the bitter end. Tamils who tried to escape were killed, children were forced to fight, and the sick and wounded were left to die, the report said.
But it was the Sri Lankan government, the report concluded, that carried the greatest responsibility for the killing.
“All but a small portion of these deaths were due to government shelling,” the report said.
Home| News Updates | About Us | Activities | Contact Us