Sri Lanka: Diplomatic Offensive Won’t Make Killing Fields Disappear

(New York-by

Elaine Pearson

Published in:

Ground Views

JUNE 30, 2011) - The Sri Lankan government continues its diplomatic offensive, denying and dismissing the growing evidence of war crimes during the final bloody battles between the Sri Lankan armed forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that ended in May 2009.

Last week, at a panel presentation of the Channel 4 film, the "Killing Fields of Sri Lanka," Sri Lanka's United Nations Ambassador Palitha Kohona said, "To suggest that the Sri Lankan military was so foolhardy as to deliberately target the civilians, I think is a blatant lie... We had no intention of creating martyrs, we had no intention of creating more volunteers for the LTTE."

If the killings of civilians were not deliberate, the Sri Lankan army attacks were clearly indiscriminate, which is no less a war crime.

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/06/30/sri-lanka-diplomatic-offensive-won-t-make-killing-fields-disappear

Statement by the Commonwealth Secretary-General’s Spokesperson on Sri Lanka

In response to queries received, the Spokesperson stated the following on 23 June 2011:

The Commonwealth membership is united in its longstanding commitment to human dignity, equality, human rights, and the rule of law – to which access to justice and an independent judiciary are fundamental. Commonwealth Heads of Government have as recently as November 2009 solemnly reiterated their commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and also to the values of tolerance, respect and understanding.

The Commonwealth recognises that respect for the dignity of all human beings is critical to promoting peace and prosperity.

The Commonwealth has long supported the peaceful resolution of the civil war in Sri Lanka, and recognises that genuine and sustainable reconciliation must include investigation of alleged war crimes and accountability of those responsible, and the promotion of justice.

The Commonwealth Secretariat has received expressions of concern about the contents of a recent television programme concerning the civil war in Sri Lanka.

http://www.thecommonwealth.org/news/34580/237683/230611sri_lanka.htm

Lanka's war of blame

(Sutirtho Patranobis, Hindustan Times June 25,)President Mahinda Rajapaksa could have expectedly felt reassured last week after meeting friends, Hu Jintao and Dmitri Medvedev, at an economic forum in St Petersburg, Russia. No one can blame Rajapaksa for feeling a little hot lately under the collar of his starched white shirt and customary red stole.

The last three months have been particularly hard on Rajapaksa's reputation of being a strongman and meeting powerful friends is one way of snapping out of a dark, diplomatic corner where he was pushed into on human rights issues.

First in April came the damning UN experts' panel report followed in May by a book, The Cage, by a former UN staff. Then rather cruelly in June came the hardest blow: Channel 4 released the documentary, Sri Lanka's Killing Fields - all three squarely blaming the Lankan government and its army for deliberately shelling and killing thousands of Tamil civilians.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/The-Lion-s-share-of-blame/Article1-713603.aspx#disqus_thread

No information for relatives on Sri Lanka missing

Hundreds of people in Sri Lanka's north who responded to a police announcement about relatives held in detention say they have been given no information. Ten days ago police said they would give details about those detained in the war, which ended in May 2009. BBC Sinhala has learned of only one man out of hundreds who went to the former war zone of Vavuniya and actually found out where his relative was. Thousands of families are still seeking loved ones two years after the war

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13887962

Tamil journalist bound, shot, during Sri Lankan civil war

(New York, June 20, 2011-CPJ) Video footage of a Tamil journalist apparently executed in the final stages of Sri Lanka's bloody civil war underscores the need for an urgent international inquiry, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

The U.K.'s Channel 4 has screened amateur footage of the body of Tamil news presenter Shoba, indicating that she was shot and killed during the government's final military surge in the northeast. Shoba, who went by one name, also reported under the name Isaipriya or Isaippiriya for the media division of the secessionist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), according to Channel 4 and the pro-LTTE TamilNet news website. "Her role was as a journalist rather than a direct fighter," Channel 4 reported.

http://www.cpj.org/2011/06/tamil-journalist-bound-shot-during-sri-lankan-civi.php

The Silence of Sri Lanka

(By DAVID MILIBAND and BERNARD KOUCHNER--nytimes)

In April 2009, we travelled together as foreign ministers to Sri Lanka, as 25 years of fighting between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers neared its end.

The remaining fighters were trapped in the northern most part of the country — along with large numbers of civilians. U.N. estimates put the numbers of civilians there in the last few months of the war at over 300,000.

Our purpose was simple: to draw attention to the human suffering, to call for humanitarian aid and workers to be allowed in, and to call for the fighting to stop.

We visited refugee camps that had been created to house Tamil refugees from Jaffna. Their stories were brutal and shocking. Random shelling in areas of fighting — including after the government had announced an end to fighting. Men and boys taken away from refugee camps — and now out of contact. Tamil life treated as fourth or fifth class. If foreign policy is about anything, it should be about stopping this kind of inhumanity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/opinion/21iht-edmiliband21.html?_r=2

Sri Lanka's Killing Fields

( Channel 4,Tue 14 Jun)

The film Sri Lanka's Killing Fields documents the final bloody weeks of the Sri Lankan civil war, in which at least 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed. One hour long, it features new evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The footage shows apparent extra-judicial massacres of prisoners by Sri Lankan government forces, the aftermath of the shelling of civilian hospitals, and the bodies of female Tamil fighters who appear to have been sexually assaulted.

New footage broadcast in the documentary, allegedly captured on a mobile phone by a soldier as a trophy video, shows three people, including one woman, being executed. A man tied to a coconut tree is also killed.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/sri-lankas-killing-fields

SRI LANKA: What happened to Bosnian women is happening to Sri Lankan Tamil wom

(AHRC- Paul Newman)During the war in Bosnia, the world was horrified by stories of war babies as women were the prime target of marauding soldiers who were out to change the demography of the land. A similar undercurrent with the aid of the Sri Lankan State is happening in northern Sri Lanka. Though the world has ignored this gross injustice committed on the Sri Lankan women, the report of the UN panel of experts released last month brought to light the failure of the Sri Lanka state to perform its sovereign duty of protecting civilians, especially women. Now the Sri Lankan authorities take every opportunity to call the report as 'flawed' and ‘biased', thus casting a negative impression on the panel and its contribution to humanity.

http://www.humanrights.asia/news/forwarded-news/AHRC-FAT-027-2011

Sri Lankan journalist missing for 500 days

(CPJ June 8, 2011)It has been exactly 500 days since Sri Lankan journalist Prageeth Eknelygodadisappeared. He has not been seen by his wife Sandhya Eknelygoda or by the couple's two teenage sons, Sanjay and Harith, since he left for work around 7:30 a.m., on the morning of January 24, 2010. Sandhya filed a complaint with the local police office at 11:30 a.m. the next day but so far no government official has given her information about her husband's whereabouts. His family and colleagues at the Lanka eNews website where he worked have no idea what has become of Eknelygoda.

"Sandhya Eknelygoda's failure in her quest for justice for her husband exposes the malfunction of the Sri Lankan government and the U.N.," said Bob Dietz, CPJ Asia program coordinator. "We call on the U.N. to step forward and help her."

http://www.cpj.org/2011/06/sri-lankan-journalist-missing-for-500-days.php

TAMIL NADU Assembly passes resolution seeking imposition of economic sanctions against Sri Lanka

[ PTI, Jun 08 ]

The Assembly on Wednesday passed a special resolution demanding that the Centre take action to get all those responsible for large-scale civilian deaths, during the Sri Lankan civil war, declared as ‘war criminals' by the United Nations.

The resolution, passed unanimously, also demanded economic sanctions against the island nation to pressure the country into giving equal status and dignity to Tamils.

It demanded that the Indian government impress on the United Nations that the perpetrators of all such crimes be designated as ‘war criminals' and that the Union government should take steps, along with other countries, to impose economic sanctions on Sri Lanka until all Tamils now staying in camps in Sri Lanka are rehabilitated in their own land and given an opportunity to lead a life of dignity with rights equal to those of the Sinhalese.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/tamil-nadu/article2087239.ece

UN screens Channel 4 Sri Lanka war crimes film

[ Channel 4 News Jun 03 ]

A special investigation by Channel 4 featuring devastating new evidence of alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka is screened at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, as pressure mounts for action. UN screens Channel 4 Sri Lanka war crimes film The documentary is an hour-long investigation into the final weeks of the bloody Sri Lankan civil war and features damning new evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

http://www.channel4.com/news/un-screens-channel-4-sri-lanka-war-crimes-film.