“Sri Lanka has employed a British PR firm to improve its reputation, [but] the one act that could surely do this – permitting a credible, international inquiry into war crimes – is something [President Mahinda] Rajapakse consistently, vehemently and unacceptably refuses to do.” In an editorial last Thursday, The Times newspaper argued: “ Sri Lanka cannot improve its damaged reputation until it accepts that it deserves it. ”
China’s increasing influence in Sri Lanka is seen by some Indian and western security analysts as a threat to India's national interests. Given the proximity and location of Sri Lanka, activities on the island by hostile states, they say, is detrimental to India’s national security. However it is missing the point to see China as the ‘problem’ here; it is Sri Lanka’s conduct that should worry India. If Sri Lanka was not to entertain powers hostile to India, then neither China, Pakistan nor any other state can pose a threat via the island.
On Wednesday we highlighted British Defence Secretary Liam Fox’s links with President Mahinda Rajapakse's government, and the minister's insistence on meeting the Sri Lankan leader this week despite the growing chorus of demands he be investigated for war crimes. It seems the much-publicised, yet supposedly 'private', meeting has also made the British government uncomfortable: The Times newspaper reported Thursday that Dr. Fox has been warned by Foreign Office officials.
The leaked cable to the US State Department from US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Patricia Butenis has this week added to growing calls for international investigations into the Rajapakse administration’s culpability for war crimes. However, it is worth remembering that the cable's contents can only be a ‘revelation’ about Washington’s awareness, if relatively recent history is ignored. For example, this is what President Obama said on May 13, 2009 : “First, the government should stop the indiscriminate shelling that has taken hundreds of innocent lives, including several hospitals, and the...
“Any mention of my island home (no matter what British political scandal it may involve), is most welcome. For here is a chance for the world to stop its hurried turning, pause a moment, and remember that savage kingdom in the Indian Ocean. To read once more of the 100,000 Tamils thought to have died in a few balmy days last May. “Memory, that dignified defender of all human life, will not simply disappear. It is the archaeological remains of our collective existence. Those who bear witness can never forget until closure is achieved .” Roma Tearne, a scholar with Brookes University, discusses...
“Japan's studied refusal to add to the international pressure on the Sri Lankan government, while it continues to pour money into infrastructure development, could be construed as not simply more ineffectual checkbook diplomacy, but in fact a cynical investment in the regime. “The failure of Sri Lanka's most significant development assistance partner to lend weight to the widespread international pressure upon the Sri Lankan government to address the many significant humanitarian and human rights issues, and respond meaningfully to Tamil grievances, provides the Sri Lankan government with the...
“Most of [Sri Lanka’s] deficit reduction plans hinge on turning around loss-making state ventures hampered by subsidy schemes, mismanagement and an infamously intractable corps of bureaucrats.” Public sector resistance to the government’s proposed economic reforms, and poor government follow-through, “could put the [proposed] changes at risk, and leave potential foreign investors still wary of Sri Lanka as a destination," Reuters reports. Sri Lanka's 1.3 million public employees are not pleased with what they see as an insufficient wage hike, which President Rajapaksa has been promising since...
It isn’t surprising that the only British politician who will be meeting Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse during his controversial visit to the UK this week is Defence Secretary Liam Fox . Amid a storm of outrage and calls this week by Amnesty International for Britain to pursue war crimes prosecutions against Sri Lankan leaders, the Defence Secretary is going to meet President Rajapakse “in a private capacity”. "This reflects Dr Fox's longstanding interest in Sri Lanka and his interest in, and commitment to peace and reconciliation there," a spokesman for Fox told The Guardian newspaper. A closer look at Dr. Fox's long-standing engagement with Sri Lanka suggests otherwise.
Britain's Channel 4 News has obtained an extended video of war crimes, including sexual abuse, by Sri Lankan soldiers committed in the last days of the war. Since then, one of the murdered women seen naked and bound in the video has been identified: a journalist well known on to Tamil television viewers during the war. Amnesty International has called on Britain to examine the gathering evidence of war crimes to see if Sri Lankan officials, including President Mahinda Rajapakse, can be indicted on universal jurisdiction laws. See the shorter version of the video, first broadcast last year by...
“There are no examples we know of a regime undertaking wholesale investigations of its own troops or senior officials for war crimes while that regime or government remained in power. In Sri Lanka this is further complicated by the fact that responsibility for many of the alleged crimes rests with the country's senior civilian and military leadership, including President Rajapaksa and his brothers and opposition candidate General Fonseka .” See the full text of a US Embassy cable of January 2010, released by Wikileaks to The Guardian newspaper here . The US cable also says Tamil political...