LLRC, a farcical attempt at accountability: paper

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 December 2011, 16:59 GMT]
Noting that the "LLRC has for too long been the international community's fig leaf, used by governments across the world, including the US and the UK, to stall calls for accountability and a credible investigation into allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide," the Tamil Guardian in its analysis of the report, points out that the report exposes the lack of mandate and the will to investigate international crimes the world was expecting to see, and asserts that "International law is uncompromising in this regard - responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide goes to the very top. In the case of Sri Lanka, the defence secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the then head of the army, General Sarath Fonseka, and the commander in chief - the president - Mahinda Rajapaksa are principally answerable."
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Rajapakse case, a legal pioneer, reaches historic milestone, says Fein

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 December 2011, 15:38 GMT]
An historic legal milestone was passed last Friday in the Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA) lawsuit against Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa for the extra-judicial killings of six Sri Lankan Tamils pending in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, attorney for the plaintiffs, Bruce Fein said. A lawyer representing President Rajapaksa from the mega-law firm Patton Boggs LLC tacitly acknowledged receipt of the complaint and summons filed by the Plaintiffs in a motion to request the District Court to ask the U.S. Department of State for its views about the lawsuit. "The motion filed by President Rajapaksa formally brings him into the case, where for the first time he will be accountable to the rule of law, not the rule of the jungle," Fein added.
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Rajapakse accepts Court summons, asks US to confer immunity

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 December 2011, 19:35 GMT]
After avoiding service for more than 9 months, and despite statements by Colombo that Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse is not answerable to US Courts, Rajapakse-appointed counsel from the lobby firm of Patton Boggs filed a motion with the District Court of District of Columbia for "enlargement of time to respond to the complaint" related to the legal action, 11-cv-00235, by three Tamil plaintiffs sponsored by Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group. Legal observers expressed surprise at the filing, which, in addition to effecting waiver of service, also attempts to set the time window for response pleading tied to a discretionary act by Judge Kotelly on seeking view of the US State Department.
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SLGA in Jaffna blamed for manipulating statistics of uprooted people from HSZ

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 December 2011, 21:51 GMT]
The Sri Lankan Government Agent in Jaffna, Imelda Sugumar, has gone on record last week drastically reducing the number of uprooted persons from the SL military-occupied High Security Zone in the district, from 66,905 persons of 14,004 families as reported by her secretariat last year, to 36,442 persons of 10,170 families this year. Ms. Sugumar was citing ‘latest figures’ from December 06, 2011. In reality, the resettlement has gone at a snail's pace and there are still around 60,000 people waiting to resettle in their lands still occupied in the name of High Security Zones. The GA and Jaffna SL military commander Maj. Gen. Mahinda Hathurusinghe, in December 2010, went on record arguing that mine-clearance in HSZ area would take another 10 years. One month ago, Mahinda Hathurusinghe was giving the figure of people remaining to be resettled as numbering only around 18,000.
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UK Tamil groups to campaign jointly for Sri Lanka's war crimes probe

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 December 2011, 00:33 GMT]
Several Tamil activist groups, Tamil affiliates of British political parties, and Tamil journalists confederation in the UK in a meeting held at the British Parliament building at 7:00 p .m. Thursday organized by the British Tamil Forum (BTF) to mark the forth coming Human Rights Day, resolved to combined forces to pressure the international community to conduct an dependent investigation into war-crimes committed during the Sri Lanka's civil war, sources in UK said.
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UK lobbyists wrote Rajapakse's UN Civil war speech - paper

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 December 2011, 01:05 GMT]
During a special undercover investigation by UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, executives from Public Relations firm, Bell Pottinger, were caught on camera boasting of employing 'dark arts' to burnish reputations of countries accused of human rights violations, and were accused of "reputation laundering" using contacts in high levels of the British Government. The Independent newspaper reporting on the investigation also revealed that Bell Pottinger wrote the UN's speech for Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse, and quoted a senior executive saying that "[the speech] went a long way taking the country [accused of rights violations] where it needed to go."
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Strategic Batticaloa borderland appropriated for colonisation

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 December 2011, 22:44 GMT]
2,500 acres of lands in Mangka'la Aaru, located along Chengkaladi-Badulla A-5 road, a border village of Batticaloa district, are to be sold to Sinhala businessmen and to foreign investors, informed sources in Paduvaankarai told TamilNet. SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa's Colombo government has recently taken steps to survey the lands through its deputy minister and paramilitary operative Vinyagamoorthy Muralitharan. A team of SL government officials from Colombo are on the ground conducting surveying and demarcating the lands in question for the last one week, the villagers said.
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War crime litigations reach crucial phase in US courts

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 December 2011, 20:19 GMT]
Civil cases against Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse and Shavendra Silva, an ex-army commander and currently Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) are waiting next round of decisions from the District Court of District of Columbia and District Court of Southern District of New York respectively, legal sources monitoring the progress of the cases said. The Rajapakse case awaits decision if the court can "force" Rajapakse to answer and engage with the Court. Shavendra case awaits decision from the SDNY judge on Silva's Motion to dismiss.
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NZ assures support for IC justice and accountability to war victims

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 December 2011, 20:01 GMT]
“New Zealand remains willing to co-operate with the international community in considering appropriate investigative mechanisms to bring justice and accountability to the victims of the Sri Lankan war,” said New Zealand’s foreign minister Murray McCully, on Thursday, in a letter addressed to Tamil Forum in New Zealand. The UNSG panel report is likely to be discussed at the March Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, he further said in the letter.
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US-UK axis drags EU into endorsing militarisation of Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 December 2011, 21:12 GMT]
USA and the UK are primarily responsible for endorsing Sri Lanka’s military rule and military solution to the national question of Tamils. Europe is unwillingly manipulated by the US-British axis, says a feedback from a Sinhala reader to the feature “West endorses ethno-military rule, military solution: Tamil civil groups,” appeared in TamilNet, Thursday. The feedback cites the instance that the ‘Friend of Sri Lanka’ EU parliamentarian, Geoferey Van Orden, who went on ‘fact-finding’ to Jaffna and came up with appreciation to Hathurusinghe’s military reconciliation, is actually a Eurosceptic British Conservative Party member who was earlier serving in the British military intelligence corps.
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Questions for Sri Lankan Ambassador of Australia: Dr. Senewiratne

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 November 2011, 11:21 GMT]
If the war is over and the Tamil people have been ‘liberated’ from the ‘terrorists’ and ‘rehabilitated’, then why does the Sri Lankan government still not allow access to international groups in Tamil areas, asks Brian Senewiratne in a hard-hitting series of questions to Sri Lankan High Comissioner to Australia. Dr. Senewiratne, a renowned physician and an Australia based Sinhala expatriate, produced posers to ex-Admiral Thissara Samarasinghe using evidence from the UN report, Channel 4 video and other sources. The ex-Admiral, incidentally, is also alleged of war crimes and there have been calls in Australia to investigate his role in the genocide of the Eelam Tamils.
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Criminal accused Iniyapaarathi conferred with 'Pride of the Nation' award in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Saturday, 26 November 2011, 13:53 GMT]
The Government of Sri Lanka led by President Mahinda Rajapakse has conferred the national award “Desamanya” (country's pride or venerable by the country) to Iniyapaarathi, who is accused by the public for playing a key role in the abductions and disappearances of several people in Poththuvil, Akkaraippattu, Thirukkoayil and Vinaayakapuram in the Ampaa'rai district of Eastern Province and who has been accused of war crimes by the United Nations rights bodies for forced arms training to children. Iniyapaarathi is a lead operative of the paramilitary group led by Vinayagamoorthy Muralidharan alias Karuna who currently holds a Deputy Minister post in the Rajapakse government. Iniyapaarathi is at present the Ampaa'rai District Coordinator for SL President Rajapaksa.
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Judge Kotelly to decide Rajapakse's legal fate in US

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 23 November 2011, 04:16 GMT]
Lead counsel for the three Tamil plaintiffs, who have charged Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse of war-crimes in the District Court of District of Columbia, filed a memorandum Tuesday requesting Judge Kollar-Kotelly to validate the service of process based on the publication of the summons and complaint in TamilNet as ordered by the Judge in her October 13th ruling. The plaintiffs also have submitted to the Court affidavits and supporting documentation which establish that attempts at publication in Colombo media were not successful due to Rajapakse's "brutally effective" efforts to silence critical media through "politically motivated deaths, attacks, and disappearances," and have requested for a waiver from local publication as "compliance has been frustrated by Defendant’s alarming attack on freedom of the press."
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Solheim hijacks thrust of Norway report

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 November 2011, 03:39 GMT]
Norwegian minister Erik Solheim, while speaking in Oslo 11 November at the release of the report evaluating Norway’s failed peace process in Sri Lanka, tried to hijack the philosophical thrust of the findings of the report and this brought him into confrontation with the evaluation team leader, Gunnar M. Sørbø. Mr. Erik Solheim tried to defend the main criticism in the report and the stand of Sørbø that Norway should have quit the peace process to signal the world of the impending dangers. Arguing that nobody expected a military solution succeeding, Solheim painted the picture of a star-crossed and epic-style tragedy that everyone has to be now contended with in a philosophical way, and said that the stand of Sørbø was ‘arrogant’. Solheim’s speech made Sørbø to remind that the issue was of life and death and Norway should have had contingencies ready.
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Rajapakse's media fears spread from TamilNet to Sinhala opponents

[TamilNet, Sunday, 20 November 2011, 19:21 GMT]
"The ban on TamilNet is the first instance of what the Free Media Movement believes may soon be a slippery slope of web and internet censorship in Sri Lanka," BBC reported on 20th June 2007 when local reports indicated that access to TamilNet was blocked by unannounced directives to service providers from officials in Colombo. Four years later, Colombo, increasingly alarmed by proliferation of opposing views to the authoritarian trend of the governing Rajapakse family, has banned access to five websites, and initiated new registration procedures for local and foreign websites that intend to carry news on Sri Lanka, local reports said. The ban on TamilNet has continued for the last 4+ years without any protest from the local rights watchdogs, and Sri Lanka has been noted by media watchdogs as one of the worst offenders of media freedom.
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China timed SAARC summit to open embassy in Maldives

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 November 2011, 18:41 GMT]
China hurriedly opened a full-fledged embassy in the Republic of Maldives on 8 November, just two days before the 17th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) held this time in Addu in the southern most atoll of Maldives between 10–11 November. Commenting that such efforts by China in the region cannot be prevented, the Indian Defence Minister A. K. Anthony on Tuesday said, "China is expanding its military capabilities and building military infrastructure along the borders with us. We know that...we are aware of that, and we are concerned about that," Deccan Herald reported Thursday. India balanced the development by signing a pact worded as ‘maritime and counter-terrorism cooperation’ by which both nations agreed “their respective territories would not be allowed for any activity inimical to the other and by any quarter.”
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Indian former foreign secretary boycotted in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 15 November 2011, 00:25 GMT]
Students and faculty of the University of Jaffna boycotted an address by India’s former foreign secretary (2004-2006) Shyam Saran, who visited Jaffna on Monday at the invitation of India-Sri Lanka Foundation and the University of Jaffna. As a result, the audience for Mr. Saran’s address at the Kailasapathy Auditirium of the university turned out to be mainly the SL military personnel occupying Jaffna. Speaking on India’s neighbourhood policy, Saran denounced international solutions to the question of Tamils in the island and advised them to seek ‘domestic’ solutions through talks. Shyam Saran was one of those met by Norway’s team that evaluated the failed peace process. The stand that India will sit on international solutions but insist on its own involvement alone was evident in an earlier statement of recently retired foreign secretary Nirupama Menon Rao too.
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International unity on criticism of Sri Lanka’s conduct: Armitage

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 November 2011, 10:45 GMT]
Expressing dismay at the “chauvinistic attitude” of the Sri Lankan state, former US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said on Friday the international community was united in its criticism of Sri Lanka’s conduct in the north and east and that SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa would not be welcomed internationally unless conditions there improved. “I don’t think anyone disagrees that the Tamil people have been mistreated and are continuing to lack – across the board – fundamental freedoms, dignity, etc,” Mr. Armitage told the audience.
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"Charming Betsy" not so charming towards defendant Silva

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 November 2011, 00:05 GMT]
November 17th is D-day to the costly defense marshaled by alleged war-criminal ex-General Shavendra Silva. He must submit a reply to plaintiffs' brief filed on the 8th during the pre-trial motion phase of the civil case initiated by two Tamil plaintiffs in the Southern District Court of New York. Facing a strong legal response by the plaintiffs' attorney, Ali Beydoun, to establish personal jurisdiction for the court to hear the case, including arguments against claimed immunity, and alternate arguments based on an exception to immunity under international laws when egregious crimes are committed, defense attorneys have a formidable legal task ahead to convince the Judge to dismiss the case, informed legal sources said. Plaintiffs have used in the jurisdictional argument, "Charming Betsy," a case that provides binding precedent to the interpretation of international law.
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LLRC accused of disclosing list of Tamil witnesses to CID

[TamilNet, Sunday, 13 November 2011, 15:26 GMT]
Tamil witnessess who gave evidence at the sittings of the Sri Lanka’s Lessons learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) and whose evidence was taken under the oath of secrecy have now been singled out for interrogation by the Sri Lanka's Criminal Investigation Department, sources in Colombo said. The LLRC, in contravention to the agreement with the witnesses, has allegedly disclosed the witness details to law enforcement authorities, placing lives of witnesses in danger, as revealed by the summons issued by the CID to 45-year old Ratnam Poongoothai, to appear before the CID in Colombo, legal sources said.
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