The Times slams Liam Fox’s 'rotten' ties to Sri Lanka

These are extracts of The Times’ editorial on Wednesday Oct 12: “Liam Fox has many questions to answer about the role of a personal friend at the Ministry of Defence. But one aspect of this imbroglio is already clear: in his dealings in a particular part of the world, Dr Fox exceeded the bounds of his ministerial remit. “The issue is Sri Lanka, on which Dr Fox appears to have been conducting his own independent foreign policy . That policy is wrong in itself and Dr Fox had no legitimate business pursuing it . But beyond that issue, he needs urgently to explain why Adam Werritty attended...

'The Road North' - Charles Haviland

Writing in Himal, the BBC's South Asia foreign correspondent, Charles Haviland, shares his recent experiences in the North-East. Extracts reproduced below, see full article here . "In Kilinochchi, right by the road, half a dozen soldiers, supervised by an officer, scrupulously tended to a huge monument (see photo) to the government’s war victory. One soldier snipped at the grass with scissors. Its centrepiece is a massive concrete cube representing the Tamil Tigers’ violent insurrection, pierced and cracked by a large bullet said to symbolise the ‘sturdiness of the invincible Sri Lankan army...

Why Sri Lanka matters

Edward Mortimer, director of communications to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan from 1998 to 2006, writes in New World magazine's 2011 Autumn edition: Extracts reproduced below, see article in full here . The government's domestic commission of inquiry is flawed and toothless . Meanwhile, continuing abuses in the country make talk of reconciliation sound increasingly hollow. An independent investigation of allegations is acutely needed , above all by the people of Sri Lanka themselves. Without it, there can be no justice for the wronged; no healing for the victims ; and, in a country marred by...

Terror on cue

Sri Lankan security forces have an overbearing presence in many Tamil-speaking areas where 'grease devils' - night prowlers - are terrorising villages. Until very recently, the term ‘grease devil’ had not appeared in international reportage on Sri Lanka. However in the past few weeks it has been associated with an epidemic of terrifying attacks and attempted attacks by night prowlers on women, largely in Tamil-speaking areas. Wearing masks or face paint, they either break into female-only houses and residences, or loiter in areas frequented by women. The incidents have not only caused panic amongst residents in Tamil, Muslim and Upcountry Tamil villages (mainly, but not exclusively), but also anger - which has been directed, tellingly, at the security forces who are seen to be protecting the prowlers. Sri Lanka has been making much of supposed local superstitions. But people are terrorised by the attacks themselves, not paranormal readings of the perpetrators. Indeed, they have often chased after - and sometimes apprehended - the prowlers when they encounter them. It is no coincidence the wave of attacks comes as Sri Lanka’s authorities are under international pressure to repeal draconian Emergency Regulations and reduce the overbearing military presence in the war-shattered Tamil areas. In short, the ‘grease devil’ phenomenon has emerged as an all too convenient justification for Sri Lanka’s security establishment to continue its massive deployment in Tamil areas.

What does the Global Tamil Forum want?

In an interview with The Sunday Leader newspaper, the Global Tamil Forum’s spokesman, Suren Surendiran, set out the organisation’s goals in Sri Lanka :

Turkey’s air strikes on the Kurds

The air strikes launched by Turkey against Kurdish bases across the border are part of a misguided strategy aimed at eliminating an entire people. Turkish leaders now seem to have discarded dialogue in favour of what has been described as a “Tamil solution” to the Kurdish question. This will lead to disaster for the country and more death and destruction for a region that is already in flames. Turkey seems clearly intent on pursuing a military option and pressing on with its cross-border assaults on Kurdish positions until guerrilla units are "rendered ineffective", as the BBC reported (18/08...

Revealing Remarks

Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Ashok K. Kantha’s address to mark his country’s 65th independence anniversary was starkly at odds with international opinion, disconnected from political developments at home, and elided the enduring humanitarian and ethnopolitical crises in Sri Lanka.

On Sri Lanka’s ‘development’ in the Northeast

These are extracts from a press release by the British Tamil Forum (BTF) on August 12, 2011. [Sri Lanka’s] so-called development agenda is geared towards establishing the infrastructure necessary to sustain the long-term occupation of the Tamil land by the Sinhala only military . It is the military, which controls the civil administration. The local people have no say in matters concerned with their local services, justice system or law enforcement, let alone development. The only visible development is building of Buddhist temples, in areas where no practising Buddhists exist, building of...

TYO-UK remembers 5th anniversary of Sencholai bombings

TYO-UK remembers the 5th anniversary of the attack on Sencholai orphanage and the children who lost their lives in the air raid. On the 14th of August 2006, sixteen bombs were dropped by Sri Lankan Air Force jets killing 53 female students and injuring many more. The students had been attending a first aid course in an orphanage. Only a short-while before the bombings, the coordinates of the orphanage had been given to the ICRC who in turn had informed the Sri Lankan state. Though the Sri Lankan government predictably accused the young girls of being LTTE cadres and the orphanage of being a...

The myth of sports and repressive regimes

David Clay Large , professor of history at Montana State University, writes in the New York Times (see full article here ): Few Olympics are as famous as the 1936 Berlin Games, whose 75th anniversary falls this month. The publicity that accompanied the competition, held under the watchful eye of Adolf Hitler, supposedly tamed the Nazi regime. But much of that story is myth. Indeed, the Olympics gave the Nazis a lesson in how to hide their vicious racism and anti-Semitism, and should offer today’s International Olympic Committee a cautionary tale when considering the location of future events...

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