Statement by the leader of the UK Labour Party, Ed Miliband MP, in remembrance of Mullaivaikkal 2009. The statement was published on the website, Tamil Canadian, on 18th May 2012.

Mullivaikal Remembrance Day: Message from Rt. Hon Ed Miliband MP

Today we commemorate the third anniversary of the end of the armed conflict in Sr Lanka.

When Prof. G. L Pieris, Sri Lanka’s External Affairs Minister, meets Mrs. Clinton, US Secretary of State tomorrow, he will have in his hand a piece of paper. The ‘Action Plan’ he will present was hastily put together in an attempt to deflect growing international criticism of Sri Lanka’s treatment of the Tamil people.

However, the title of the document is misleading. The ‘Action Plan’ is not actually a blue print for forthcoming action. Instead, and as Sri Lanka’s past record of promised ‘action’ on the Tamil question indicates, all the ‘action’ in the ‘Action Plan’ will be done with its presentation. In other words Sri Lanka’s ‘Action Plan’ to resolve the Tamil issue is simply to present the ‘Action Plan’ and then carry on much the same as before.

The Global Tamil Forum (GTF) joined President Jacob Zuba, ministers and senior government officials of South Africa to pay tribute to the late activist and minister, Roy Padayachie, at his state funeral in Durban on Wednesday.

See here for further details.

Introducing the spokesperson of the GTF, Mr Suren Surendiran, South Africa's Minister of Economic Development Trevor Manuel said:

Gary Anandasangaree, monitor for Sri Lanka at Lawyers' Rights Watch, and legal counsel for the Canadian Tamil Congress (CTC), writes in the Sunday Leader on the recently passed resolution at the 19th session of the UN Human Rights Council.  

Writing in his online blog, the British news anchor, Jon Snow from Channel 4 questions whether the England cricket team should be playing in Sri Lanka on tour, whilst war crimes and crimes against humanity remain unaccounted for.

See here for original article. The text has been reproduced in full below:

As the England cricket team commences its 2012 tour of Sri Lanka, the Tamil Youth Organisation UK (TYO UK) and the undersigned UK university Tamil societies continue to call on the England and Wales Cricket Board to suspend all bilateral arrangements with Sri Lanka's national cricket team until there has been meaningful progress on ensuring accountability and justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity. We call for an immediate end to the on-going human rights violations being committed by the Sri Lankan Government and its security forces in the North-East of the island.

Almost three years after the end of the armed conflict, and a year since we first called for a boycott of Sri Lankan cricket - in line with wider trade sanctions, and economic isolation as a means to urging Sri Lanka to act - there has been no significant progress on human rights or accountability. Instead, the time and space afforded to Sri Lanka by the international community, in the name of development, reconciliation and international engagement, have led to an ever increasing and brazen disregard for human rights by the Sri Lankan state and fiercer attempts to prevent accountability and justice.

Instead of repealing emergency laws, scaling down the military, and working to protect and safeguard individual rights and freedoms, the Sri Lankan state has been emboldened by the international community’s continued sanctioning of impunity. It is pursuing an agenda of increased militarisation and colonisation of the Tamil areas, as well as widespread, and systematic human rights abuses. Reports published by international human rights organisations over the past year, have detailed evidence of on-going human rights violations against Tamil civilians in the North-East of the island, including abduction, illegal detention, torture, the torture of asylum seekers deported from the UK, extra-judicial killings, sexual violence, and the relentless clamp down on media freedom.

Sri Lanka’s on-going disregard for human rights is against a back drop of impunity. Three years post-conflict the credible allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity, resulting in the deaths of at least 40,000 Tamil civilians as detailed within a UN Panel of Experts report, remain unaccounted for. The past year has seen nothing but the failure of Sri Lanka’s internal inquiry and continued indignant resistance towards an independent process.

Writing in the online site, OpenDemocracy, Sivakami Rajamanoharan, from the Tamil Youth Organisation UK (TYOUK), explains why reconciliation in Sri Lanka continues to fail. 

See here for original article on OpenDemocracy.

The Tamil people should not keep quiet anymore. Their mass organisations and civil groups should realise their duties and the fact that the unfolding scenario has no room for individual issues.

It is futile for the Tamil political leadership, positioning itself against the aspirations of the people, to again and again get trapped in the old ways of polity. The next stage should be a mass struggle.

Writing in the Independent, Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields Director Callum Macrae has revealed some of the new evidence of summary executions that they have uncovered whilst making their follow up documentary, “War Crimes Unpunished”.

Extracts have been reproduced below. See the full piece here.

For more information on the upcoming documentary “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished”, see here. It will be broadcast on Channel 4 this Wednesday the 14th of March at 10.55pm.

“A 12-year-old boy lies on the ground. He is stripped to the waist and has five neat bullet holes in his chest. His name is Balachandran Prabakaran and he is the son of the LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. He has been executed in cold blood. Beside him lie the bodies of five men, believed to be his bodyguards. There are strips of cloth on the ground indicating that they were tied and blindfolded before they were shot – further evidence suggesting that the Sri Lankan government forces had a systematic policy of executing many surrendering or captured LTTE fighters and leading figures, even if they were children.”

“In one incident, legally significant because it is well documented, two international UN workers leading the last UN overland food convoy became trapped near a temporary hospital in a village primary school in Uddiyakattu, in the first of the government's No Fire Zones.”

“With the help of other civilians they began to dig bunkers to provide some protection from incoming shellfire. As was standard practice, one of the UN workers, an Australian called Peter Mackay, took precise GPS co-ordinates of the site, and these were supplied to the government. But if that had any effect, it was certainly not the desired one. Over the next couple of days the camp was subjected to a massive, sustained barrage of incoming shellfire, much of it falling directly on or near to the UN bunker. Dozens were killed – and many more horrifically injured. It was all photographed by the UN workers.”

“In a sense, it was just one relatively small incident in the ongoing carnage of the war, but it is potentially significant because it provides specific evidence linking the Sri Lankan government's chain of command to knowledge of targeted attacks on civilians – attacks that appear to constitute war crimes.”

Writing  in the Indian Express, Maja Daruwala, director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, has called on India to assert leadership at the UN Human Rights Council and call for accountability in Sri Lanka.

Extracts have been reproduced below. See the full piece here.

"The time has come for India to be bolder and more confident on human rights at the international level. Its growing stature in international affairs demands this leadership position. The current session of the UN Human Rights Council presents India with an excellent opportunity to move towards a foreign policy that truly befits the world’s largest democracy. It should seize the opportunity and vote in favour of accountability in Sri Lanka."

"Unfortunately, the proposed resolution does not go far enough. It will not immediately call for direly needed international investigations — a bitter disappointment. In this context, the proposed resolution must not preclude future UNHRC efforts that demand justice, accountability and international investigations in Sri Lanka. The resolution should be voted on only as a first step in the right direction, and not as a final step to water down scrutiny or as a tactic to delay urgently needed justice in Sri Lanka."

"From India’s point of view, the resolution is saying nothing that India has not ostensibly been asking of Sri Lanka both publicly and privately — real accountability and soon. A stable, well-governed neighbour is in India’s interest as a regional power. Stability requires that alienated populations experience justice for the past and in the future. Denials, diplomatic spin and cosmetic efforts that paper over past misdeeds cannot achieve this. Today, only a negative peace exists in Sri Lanka."