Tag Archives: Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

Sri Lanka opposes UN screening of critical film

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Sri Lankan diplomats are working to block a British-made documentary about the Asian country’s civil war from being shown on the sidelines of a United Nations human rights meeting this week, arguing that it is part of a concerted campaign by the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels to destabilize the peace.

In a letter obtained Monday by The Associated Press the island nation’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva said the film contained a narrative that was “discredited, uncorroborated and unsubstantiated.”

The letter sent Sunday by Sri Lankan ambassador Ravinatha Aryasinha to the head of the U.N. Human Rights Council, warns that the global body could be violating its own rules if the film is screened March 1 in Geneva at a meeting hosted by rights groups.

The 90-minute documentary, titled “No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka,” alleges government troops and Tamil Tiber rebels engaged in war crimes during the final stages of the conflict in 2009.

The film shows interviews with eyewitnesses and original footage of alleged atrocities against civilians including summary execution, sexual violence and torture. Its backers include the non-profit Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and Britain’s Channel 4 television, which aired two previous documentaries on the Sri Lanka’s civil war.

“The timing and the venue of this screening clearly demonstrates that it is aimed at influencing the debate in the council on Sri Lanka,” Aryasinha said in the letter, citing the two previous films that were also shown during meetings of the Geneva-based rights body.

He said the film contained “morphed and diabolical” material aimed at undermining the process of reconciliation between Tamils and the nation’s ethnic Sinhalese majority.

The film’s director Callum Macrae acknowledged that the documentary’s release had been timed to coincide with one of the council’s three regular annual meetings, but denied that it distorted the facts.

“We believe that our film contains very important evidence about the terrible events in the last few months of this war and we believe we have a duty to make that evidence available to the diplomats and country missions at the U.N. Human Rights Council who must make important decisions about how to ensure accountability and justice in Sri Lanka,” Macrae said.

Earlier this month the U.N.’s top human rights official faulted Sri Lanka for failing to properly investigate reports of atrocities during the war and said government opponents continue to be killed and abducted.

The United States has said it will introduce a resolution at the meeting urging a full accounting of what happened at the end of the war. A U.N. report says tens of thousands of civilians were killed in the final five months of the fighting.

By FRANK JORDANS
Associated Press

China is a threat to global good

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As the world watches without being able to bring about a ceasefire, a humanitarian crisis is underway in Sri Lanka with nearly 170,000 civilians displaced and 50,000 trapped in the war zone.

It has become common for rampaging armed forces and also those in cahoots with terrorists the world is battling with, despots and dictators to cock a snook at the UN. Much of the cockiness lies in the covert moral and logistic support lent by China, hungry for resources for widening its reach to get a major slice of business in the troubled regions and make its presence felt.

The Sri Lankan offensive against the LTTE is not faulted as the terrorist organization has used all possible means of violence over the years to foment terror in this beautiful island resembling a tear drop in the Indian Ocean. Lots of blood sweat and tears have flowed for the fight for a separate Tamil homeland in protest for the marginalization of the Sri Lankan Tamils. But the process of terror was always condemnable and has encouraged later day terror groups like the al Qaeda to emulate their suicide attack techniques.

But what happened so suddenly that the Sri Lankan armed forces finally managed to decimate the formidable LTTE?

It was China once again. Having supported despots with blood on their hands in Africa and Myanmar for the sake of resources to feed a surging Chinese economy, Sri Lanka was a natural choice to complete the string of pearls in the Indian Ocean.

Having set about building and ramping up ports in Burma, Bangladesh and Pakistan, which would in be used for docking and refuelling of its navy, China is now building a $1 billion port in the fishing village of Hambantota in Sri Lanka’s north east, very close to the fighting zone. It would also double up as the Chinese Navy’s stop-over point during patrols to guard against piracy of oil imports from the Middle East and establish a base in the Indian Ocean all along the arc.

No wonder the Sri Lankan armed forces are fighting perhaps their last battle to crush the LTTE for ever with an urgency never seen before. Shunned by governments the world over including India when Sri Lanka sought arms for the civil war, China chipped in during the last two decades with arms supplies. Chinese arms supplies increased further when the US suspended all military aid to Sri Lanka citing gross human rights violations. Chinese aid to Sri Lanka jumped to $1billion last year leaving other nations far behind.

Like wise, China beefed up the Myanmar armed forces and stood with them when they were accused of human rights violations last year when monks and civilians rose in protest against rampant corruption, price rise and food shortage. Pakistan can act in self denial of not harbouring terrorists and fuel terror acts in neighbouring countries on the strength of Chinese military aid and support while the US and western powers resign themselves to the reality and cannot do much about it.

According to Jane’s Defence Weekly, Sri Lanka shopped for $37.6 million worth of arms and supplies for its army and navy. China gave 6 F7 fighter jets for free in 2007 as per reports of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. According to media reports, the bulk of arm shipments fro China was handled by Lanka Logistics and Technologies where the Defence Secretary who is the Sri Lankan president’s brother, has a major stake.

And the arms went into killing 75 civilians in a makeshift hospital by the Sri Lankan armed forces which lay very close to the battle zone. It was the only one available for the trapped civilians.

UN reports peg civilian casualties at 6500 since January this year as the Sri Lankan government vehemently denies and keeps the war zone out of bounds for journalists and aid workers.

Sri Lanka is acting with the same nonchalance to global criticism and pressure as Myanmar’s armed forces did last year on the strength of a counter weight like China. Calls for evacuating the civilians have fallen on deaf years.

China’s desperate need for Hambantota had been cautioned by Pentagon’s Air Staff personnel Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher J. Pehrson in a 2006 paper and by the U.S. Joint Forces Command last November.

With a trail of blood from volatile Africa, Myanmar to Sri Lanka, China is a threat to global good and reticent about gross human rights violations and human catastrophes to preserve its own commercial interests.

US have also been accused of partying with despots and affecting civilian casualties, but democracy allows a groundswell of dissent as was evident in the last presidential elections. China has stifled a moral counterweight which makes it more dangerous.

Susenjit Guha

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Should Rajiv Gandhi Assassins be Hanged?

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Megara is into her adolescence today and in the last 21 years, she has seen her parents just once! Megara was born in a high security prison in Poonamallee in suburban Chennai where her mother Nalini Murugan was jailed in connection with the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Death sentence for the trio in Rajiv Gandhi Killing

It has been over 2 decades since LTTE suicide bomber Dhanu detonated an RDX explosive laden belt that killed Rajiv Gandhi and 14 others. The Gandhi family has come in terms with the tragedies that haunted the family over the years. Long forgotten the history where political decisions cost lives and shattered the dreams of many. Years down the line, forgiveness paved way for a new beginning when Sonia intervened to commute Nalini’s death sentence to life imprisonment and when Priyanka met Nalini at the Vellore Central Prison which Nalini explained a life changing visit.

However, after suffering imprisonment for the past 20 years, death seems to be just a span away for Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan as President Pratibha Patil rejected their mercy petition in Gandhi’s killing. Rajiv Gandhi was killed during an election rally in Sriperumbudur near Chennai on May 21, 1991 which was orchestrated ordered by LTTE. In 1999, Supreme Court had confirmed the death sentence of four accused in the case – Nalini, Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan. Later Nalini’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment at the intervention of Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv’s widow.

Nalini, Rajiv Gandhi Killing

There has been a hue and cry over the decision to impose death penalty to the trio on September 9. The Tamil Nadu Assembly has unanimously adopted a resolution for commuting the death sentence of the three accused. Presenting the case of the convicts, senior lawyer and politician Ram Jethmalani argued mercy petition of the assassins was rejected by the President after 11 years and four months. He said the delay is prima facie wrong and a notice seeking explanation should be sent. Hearing the petition, the Madras high court stayed hanging of the three convicts facing the gallows to eight weeks.

The political parties are intensifying their campaign to reprieve the death order and many across the country shares the opinion that the capital punishment should be recalled. Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani, who was acquitted in the Parliament attack case, argued that no law permits a death sentence and said he is against the capital punishment. The Sikh Students Federation has pleaded for the cancellation of the death penalty in a written statement. People from different walks of life including politicians, social activists, intellectuals and writers have urged the central government to remove the death sentence from the Indian penal laws.

Rajiv Gandhi Killing by LTTE

However, it’s a big question before the Indian minds to let this happen or not? Are we going to pursue the practice of death penalty and will all the criminals who deserve gallows would face it? Capital punishment is never a punishment, rather an escape for the criminals. It relieves them from the pain they ought to undergo and denies them the opportunity to repent. So, what do you think their fate should be?

 

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