A British MP, Simon Danczuk, who is part of a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association delegation due in Colombo this week, asserted that he would confront the president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, regarding the murder of a British citizen, Khuram Shaikh. Danczuk told The Daily Telegraph : "I'm going to confront the president of Sri Lanka on whether he thinks this behaviour is becoming of a Commonwealth nation." "The perception is that they're trying to cover it up. My guess is that [it's because] the alleged murderer is a local politician who delivers for the ruling party, which delivers for the president and helps them remain elected," "The British government should think twice about who we send to CHOGM if justice is not done before then, and whether it should include the Prime Minister," Shaikh, a Red Cross aid worker, was murdered whilst on holiday in Sri Lanka on Christmas Day in 2011. His partner reported that she was gang-raped and beaten unconscious. However, earlier this month, Sri Lanka's Chief Government Whip, Minister Dinesh Gunawardena, refuted her reports, and told Parliament that the partner of the murdered British citizen, Khuram Shaikh, was not subjected to any rape or sexual violence. Gunawardena said that she 'had only received serious injuries as a result of being assaulted'. See related articles: SL minister refutes rape testimony of murdered Brit's partner (12 July 2013) Sri Lanka rape victim will ‘go on to the end’ for justice (21 Apr 2013)
Further evidence of torture and forced detainment in the North-East surfaced in the public domain today. According to Lankasri News , a group of unidentifiable police personnel, arrested and detained a 26 year old Jaffna University student, Devarasa Pradheban. Pradheban was detained for 3 days under allegations that he was a former member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Pradheban was returned home with numerous obvious signs of torture on his body.
The Japanese embassy announced on Friday that it would grant US$ 88,667 in aid for "The Project for Mobilization of the Citizenry to Participate in the Electoral Process to Strengthen Democracy" which would include voter education in the Northern Province and election monitoring in the proposed provincial council elections. The embassy said, “Supporting the efforts of the Government of Sri Lanka to strengthen democracy, this project is aimed at encouraging local people in the North to exercise their first-ever franchise at provincial level since 1988 and to ensure the conduct of free and fair...
The Sentinal Project, an organisiation that works to combine genocide research information technology and risk management to prevent genocide, have released a new database to help the process. Hatebase , a new crowd sourced database of multilingual hate speech, will create a bank of words and phrases that researchers can use to detect early stages of genocide. Users will be able to log on to the website and add examples of hate speech that they come across in their communities or online. Highlighting the importance of unveiling prevalent hate speech around the world, executive director of The...
The Sri Lankan Ambassador at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva has said that his country was prepared to share the country’s experience in humanitarian work. Ravinatha Aryasinha said post-conflict approaches used by Sri Lanka could be deployed in managing humanitarian situations in other countries as well. Read more here .
In an attempt to stop one of his UNP MP's from jumping ship to the government, the leader of the opposition, Ranil Wickremasinghe, met MP Dayasiri Jayasekara on Friday. According to ColomboPage , UNP sources said the discussions, which lasted over an hour, were "fruitful". Meanwhile earlier this week, a government MP, Economic Development Deputy Minister S.M.Chandrasena, asserted that one quarter of all UNP MPs were ready to cross over to the SLFP. Previous such ministers who have slipped over to the SLFP from the UNP include the current Minister of External Affairs, G.L Peiris. Recently, a...
Speaking to the Sunday Leader, on the upcoming Northern Provincial Council election, the spokesperson, Suren Surendiran, for the Global Tamil Forum, asserted that " no amount of military intimidation through occupation will suppress our people's demand for self determination ". See here for full report. Extracts of Surendiran's remarks reproduced below: "The elections for the Northern Provincial Council will take place amidst concerns over the environment in the North. The occupation of civilian land in Jaffna by the military and acquisition of land by the government under the land...
In the second part of an interview to The Weekend Leader, the leader of the Tamil National Peoples' Front (TNPF), Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, reiterated that the party believed the " North-East is as much the homeland of the Muslims as it is for the Tamils ". Reflecting on past Tamil-Muslim relations, he said, "There have been unfortunate mistakes made by the Tamils [against Muslims]. The Tamils have unreservedly apologized for those mistakes. We are keen to make sure they are never repeated. " He added, " My party however refuses to speak on behalf of the Muslim people . They don’t like us to speak for them, as if we have a common identity. I think the Tamils must respect their feeling and accept whatever identity they choose for themselves. We are committed to working out a framework for the North-East that the Muslims and Tamils will feel mutually comfortable and secure with . I have no doubts that such an arrangement can be arrived at." See here for part 2 of the interview, and here for part 1. His comments regarding the 13th Amendment are reproduced below: " The 13th amendment purports to provide devolution within the unitary framework structure of the Sri Lankan State. The term “unitary” has very specific legal connotations under constitutional law. All legislative and executive powers are vested in one power centre in a unitary state. In other words, the unitary state structure cannot provide for devolution of power. The 13th amendment only provides the mirage of devolution .
Sri Lanka’s Election Secretariat has announced that three international organisations will be invited to observe the Provincial Council polls. The Commonwealth, South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC), and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will be asked by the government to monitor the elections for the Northern, Central and North-Western Provincial Councils. It is yet unclear whether all three organisations will monitor all provinces.
Sri Lanka’s attempts to restrict media accreditation to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) later this year and bar international journalists who have exposed the atrocities committed against the Tamil people at the end of the armed conflict, have led to widespread condemnation of the state’s abysmal record on press freedom. Whilst the condemnation is welcome, the current furore negates the very crux of the conflict – the Tamil question. The Sri Lankan state’s clampdown on press freedom is not universal in its intention or impact. Instead, Sri Lanka has a long-standing policy of targeting the Tamil press (and by extension, non-Tamil journalists probing Tamil injustices) in an attempt to silence the Eelam Tamil nation. To Tamil journalists working in the North-East, the granting of media accreditation to their international counterparts is of little consequence. The juxtaposition, so close to home, only serves to highlight the lack of press freedom available to them.