Fonseka can attend parliament: Gotabhaya

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 April 2010, 13:22 GMT]
The Secretary General of the Sri Lanka’s parliament Wednesday received a letter from Gotabhaya, the Sri Lankan defence secretary, stating that General (retd) Sarath Fonseka can attend parliament and take oaths as parliamentarian.
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Fonseka likely to attend inaugural session of new parliament

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 April 2010, 09:25 GMT]
General Sarath Fonseka is likely to attend the opening session of the seventh parliament that is fixed for April 22. Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse has been asked by the Acting Secretary General of Parliament Dhammika Kitulgoda to take necessary steps to allow General Fonseka to attend parliament.
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Third Mu'l'livaaykkaal in the name of 'development'

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 March 2010, 12:50 GMT]
After abetting a military defeat and subsequently blessing a political defeat, the coterie of countries propping up Sri Lankan state is now bent upon enacting a third Mu’l’livaaykkaal, by bringing in a ‘development defeat’ of Eezham Tamils through handing over development management to the Sinhalese, said a concerned group of diaspora Tamils who recently had an experience of negotiating development in a peace-facilitating European country. Funding agencies of this country, citing their present choice of a Sinhala NGO for implementation of programmes in the island, advise Diaspora Tamils seeking development funds for the North and East to work under the Sinhala NGO.
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Ex-Somali defense minister in war-crimes trial in US

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 March 2010, 12:09 GMT]
U.S. Supreme Court will hear "war-crimes charges" against former Somali Defense minister and Prime Minister Mohamed Ali Samantar in a civil case this Wednesday, legal sources in Washington said. Samantar, 74, currently lives in Fairfax, Virginia, after fleeing his native country in 1991 to Rome, and then moving to the U.S. to join his wife and children in 1997. Samantar's five accusers say that Samantar bears command responsibility for a "regime of repeated rape, abduction, summary execution, and years long imprisonment in solitiary confinement" of many of their relatives. Samantar's attorneys argue that their client has immunity under Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act.
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UN rights chief says lack of progress in Sri Lanka investigations

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 February 2010, 03:43 GMT]
Recent statement in Dublin by United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navaneetham Pillai, that national investigations in Sri Lanka "have not worked so far," and Sri Lanka's Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse's interview to the BBC, where Mr Rajapakse said that "he would not allow any war crimes investigation in Sri Lanka," are two forceful statements with enough legal weight to satisfy the basic requirement of international law mandating "complementarity," legal sources in Washington said. International law permits International bodies to step-in to conduct investigations on war-crimes in Sri Lanka, as the opportunities given to Sri Lanka to investigate and prosecute war crimes committed by its armed forces have been exhausted, legal sources added.
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Mixed responses from Buddhist prelates on Fonseka arrest

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 February 2010, 05:12 GMT]
Buddhist Chief Prelates (Mahanayakas) of Asgiriya and Malwatte Chapters have come out with mixed responses on Fonseka's arrest. While the Mahanayaka of Malwatte Chapter has said that he was awaiting response from the Sri Lankan president, saying that Mr. Rajapaksa "could have been in dark" while the arrest took place, the Mahanayaka of Asgiriya Chapter has deplored the sudden arrest of Sarath Fonseka. In the meantime, Sri Lankan opposition sources said they were awaiting a joint written statement from the main prelates. The Buddhist prelates exercise a dominant influence on the Sri Lankan regime. The prelates of four chapters will be meeting on 18 February to discuss Fonseka's arrest.
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SL Supreme Court decides to hold inquiry into Fonseka FR petition

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 February 2010, 04:07 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court Friday has granted leave to proceed in a controversial Fundamental Rights (FR) petition filed by Anoma Fonseka on behalf of her husband General Sarath Fonseka who has been detained by the Military police. The FR petition has been listed for inquiry on February 23 and on that date the Supreme Court will consider granting interim relief in the Sarath Fonseka FR case, legal sources said.
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Army Major arrested for extorting money from Tamil businessman

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 February 2010, 11:39 GMT]
The Criminal Investigation Department of the Colombo Police Wednesday arrested an army officer in the rank of a Major in the Sinha Regiment of the Sri Lanka Army and another civilian in connection with an alleged extortion of money in the amount of seven million rupees from a leading businessman in Wellawatte, media in Colombo reported.
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Sri Lanka, acid test for International Law

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 February 2010, 23:15 GMT]
The widespread systematic pattern of crimes committed by the Sri Lankan state against Tamil civilians, particularly during the first five months of 2009 in the Northeast province, constitute violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, legal scholars have said. During this period, indifference exhibited by the international community, including the United Nations, led to the deaths of more than 30,000 Tamils. The strong transnational expatriate Tamil community now has the burden (a) to prevent Sri Lanka from erasing the massacres from historical record, (b) to resist attempts by international powers to persuade Tamils for reconciliation without establishing justice and accountability for the crimes, and (c) to seek justice for tens of thousands of Tamil victims by charging Sri Lanka of war crimes and genocide against Tamils in world courts.
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Fonseka had plans to stage Russian style coup, says Rajapaksa government

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 February 2010, 17:08 GMT]
The United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) government led by Mahinda Rajapaksa Friday claimed that there was an attempt to stage a Russian style coup in Sri Lanka on the eve of last presidential election. Thirty seven persons including several retired Major Generals and Colonels and Brigadiers have been held in detention over their alleged involvement in the coup attempt, the government said.
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Gotabhaya opens door for UN investigations of Sri Lanka war crimes - Prof. Boyle

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 February 2010, 04:51 GMT]
Referring to Gotabhaya Rajapakse's interview to the BBC Tuesday where Mr Rajapakse said that he would not allow any war crimes investigation in Sri Lanka, Professor Francis Boyle, an expert in International Law and a professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law said, "Defense Secretary Rajapaksa has now publicly and definitively ruled out any investigation of war crimes by the Government of Sri Lanka. And he is a government official acting within the scope of his official duties so that his statement binds the State of Sri Lanka under international law. Hence the basic requirement of international law mandating "complementarity" has been satisfied.
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Gotabhaya outbursts against UN, International investigations

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 February 2010, 23:01 GMT]
Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the Sri Lankan defence secretary and the brother of the SL president, in an exclusive interview to the BBC on Tuesday, opposed any international investigation on war crimes during the final stage of the war. Meanwhile, the official news website of the Rajapaksa government in its Sinhala and versions has blamed external forces for rejuvenating the claim of Tamil Eelam by backing Sarath Fonseka, citing the pattern of the results of the recent presidential elections. The Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa also warned the politicians not to guide the 'innocent people' in 'wrong path', while he referred to the election participation in North and East in his Tamil version of the February 04 speech.
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Colombo not answerable to UN for 80,000 IDPs remaining in Vavuniyaa camps - Minister

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 February 2010, 13:01 GMT]
About eighty thousand Internally displaced persons from Vanni region still remain in camps located in Vavuniyaa despite Sri Lanka government's assurances to the United Nations that all IDPs will be resettled by January 31. Richard Badiudeen, Minister of Resettlement and disaster relief services, told Colombo media Monday that no such assurance has been given to any organization including UN.
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SL forces surround Fonseka's hotel

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 January 2010, 05:17 GMT]
Heavily armed Sri Lankan forces have surrounded Wednesday Cinnamon Lake hotel in Colombo, where opposition presidential candidate and former Sri Lanka Army General (retd) Sarath Fonseka was residing with opposition leader Ranil Wickramasinghe and JVP leader Somawanse Amarasinghe. Sarath Fonseka, who is trailing in the presidential contest against his former Commander-in-Chief Mahinda Rajapaksa was scheduled to hold a press conference Wednesday morning, but journalists were not allowed to reach the hotel and were waiting at Sri Sittampalam Gardiner Mawatte. In the meantime, Sri Lankan military spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara has alleged that Sarath Fonseka was harbouring SLA deserters inside the hotel. Military has also been deployed around media outlets in Colombo.
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Satellite imagery evidence of Hospital attack recorded in Dublin

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 January 2010, 12:49 GMT]
Do the facts made available to the Dublin war-crimes tribunal on the available direct and circumstantial evidence that between 9 January 2009 and 25 March 2009, in areas in or nearby Puthukkudiyiruppu (PTK) Hospital, legally establish that the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) committed, purposely, intentionally or knowingly, via act or omission, war crimes against Tamil civilians? - was the legal question presented to the tribunal. "The legal admissibility of evidence, currently available and to be discovered in the future, and the question of culpability of Sri Lanka of war-crimes, are likely to continue well beyond Dublin," said a spokesperson for the US-based pressure group, Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), on the attack on the PTK hospital during the early months of 2009.
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Diplomatic misstep

[TamilNet, Friday, 25 December 2009, 21:33 GMT]
Professor Rajiva Wijesinha, permanent secretary to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, appears to have received a reprimand from his Department's Minister after making disparaging remarks on Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary execution, and for dismissing as "another nuisance," the letter from Alston requesting explanation to Sarath Fonseka's allegations that Colombo may have committed war-crimes. In an interview, Mr Wijesinha calls Alston "a sad man," "an excitable man," and "a bit of an excitable chap." The Sri Lanka Government announced that it has withdrawn Mr. Wijesinha's self-publicized response to Alston.
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Fonseka revelations mandate independent probe into UN's role, says Boyle

[TamilNet, Thursday, 24 December 2009, 01:11 GMT]
Former Sri Lanka Army Commander, Sarath Fonseka's revelations of Gotabhaya Rajapakse ordering executions of surrendering LTTE leaders and their families, and UN chief of Staff Vijay Nambiar's reported role in the deadly surrenders "require a formal Investigation of the entire role played by the United Nations Organization and its Officials throughout the course of this latest irruption of the GOSL genocide against the Tamils starting in January of 2009 until today," said Professor Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois. "The U.N. Secretary General has the power to order and publish such an investigation," Boyle added.
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Zurich, Vienna, war crimes and Tamil polity

[TamilNet, Friday, 18 December 2009, 07:28 GMT]
By concentrating in an undue way on the choice of a president between the two main candidates seen as war criminals, why should Eezham Tamils ultimately uphold the interests of any of the powers either committed or abetted those very war crimes but show no signs of mending their ways on the national question and are now backing those dummy candidates, argues TamilNet political commentator in Colombo. Instead, Tamil politicians and new political aspirants among Tamils should leave the matter to genuine and spontaneous decision of the Tamil people and should make the best use of the time to concentrate more on laying strong foundations to the emerging national polity of Eezham Tamils to face any eventuality that emerges after the presidential elections, he further said.
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Rajapakse brothers, Brigadier Silva, presumptive war criminals, says Boyle

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 15 December 2009, 04:18 GMT]
Former Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Commander General Sarath Fonseka's statement to the effect that the Rajapaksa Brothers, Gotabhaya Rajapakse and Basil Rajapakse, and Brigadier Shavendra Silva ordered the murder of surrendering LTTE leaders protected by a White Flag pursuant to a prior agreement to surrender that way sets forth a prima facie "war crime" under the customary international laws of war as codified into and exemplified by U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 "The Law of Land Warfare" (1956), paragraph 504, said Professor Francis A. Boyle, University of Illinois College of Law, and an expert in International Law, in a note sent to TamilNet.
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AG to institute legal action against Fonseka

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 December 2009, 10:45 GMT]
The Attorney General has been directed by the government to investigate and institute legal action against General (retd) Sarath Fonseka for making allegation against the Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse that the latter had ordered the Division Commander on the ground to kill LTTE cadres who made an attempt to surrender, according to Human Rights Minister, Mahinda Samarasinghe.
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