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Foreign Affairs

Enemies Of The President’s Guarantee: Basil The Major Political Agent Of The Family

By Rajiva Wijesinha –

Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha MP

Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha MP

Enemies of the President’s Promise &#8211 Chapter 2 – Satisfied Component 4

Underlying Basil’s solipsism was his political ambition. He created no bones about the fact that he saw himself as his brother’s successor. Indeed, he had been put into Parliament ahead of the 2010 election, although a resignation of a National List member that was engineered, on the grounds that there had to be a Rajapaksa accessible for appointment as President if anything untoward occurred to the incumbent. And although quickly soon after the election of 2010 Mahinda Rajapaksa introduced a constitutional amendment to get rid of term limits, so that Basil’s hope of becoming observed as necessarily the government candidate in the subsequent election was dashed, the President placed no restrictions on him presenting himself as successfully the principal choice maker in government.

So, in addition to his function in the North, he set about taking handle of developmental projects all over the country. Tourism was brought beneath the Ministry of Financial Development, which allowed him quickly after the government was formed to sell a prime block of land in Colombo to Shangri-La hotels, a crass measure since it created it difficult afterwards to refuse outright ownership to such investors. Fortunately, following a great outcry, the principle that only extended leases need to be permitted was accepted, but again the move was standard of Basil’s propensity to push through bargains speedily, regardless of wider consequences.

Basil Mahinda ChinaWhile he utilized to the full his position as patron of international ventures, he also tried to take manage of the administration of the country at huge. He did this through the Samurdhi programme, the welfare programme that was in place all more than the nation. Initially began to market entrepreneurship, it had quickly grow to be the primary car of government handouts to selected sections of the population.

Basil decided to use it to expand his empire, with graduates employed in each Division in the nation to affirm the primacy of his Ministry. Certainly I was told that there had even been an try to appoint Samurdhi officials as Grama Niladharis, the office that was the 1st point of interaction among folks and government. The Ministry of Public Administration staved off this effort, but it meant that for several years Grama Niladhari positions that were vacant have been not filled, until finally that Ministry reasserted its control of the position. Certainly a measure of Basil’s unpopularity with his colleagues was the categorical statement, when I told the Minister that he must guard against his responsibilities being encroached upon, that the Ministry of Economic Development was encroaching on everything.

Such encroachment could have been initiated in a civilized manner, because it could be argued that financial development was of the essence in all regions. But clearly with Basil it was power that he sort, rather than coordinated efficiency, for he took no steps to make certain that officials in related fields worked with each other. Therefore there were no clear systems to make certain coordination between the Grama Niladharis and the Samurdhi Improvement officers, and later the Financial Improvement officers, who have been assigned to each GN Division.

Although certainly they worked collectively, they did not have recommendations about ensuring consultation of the neighborhood and liaising with other government departments. Numerous of them told me, for the duration of the Divisional Secretariat Reconciliation meetings I had in the North and East, that they had been collecting data, but what this data was for, they seemed to have no notion. They had received quite small education just before getting appointed, and even though the Ministry of Defence put on a leadership development programme for some of them which was significantly appreciated, they have been not clear about their terms of reference, nor the way in which they could coordinate function with other government agencies. A programme of preparing reports, and making sure follow up for suggestions primarily based on people’s needs as properly as their recommendations, was not place in place, which was a pity considering that this was the first occasion on which the more than-worked Grama Niladharis had been provided qualified help employees to help with developmental work.

A single region in which guidelines have been laid down formally led to issues which had unfortunate consequences for the nation. Amongst the initiatives of Basil’s Ministry was a rural improvement programme referred to as Divineguma for which he introduced an Act which the Supreme Court ruled was in violation of the Constitution, in that it took away from the monetary authority of Parliament. Basil was furious when the judgment was delivered. In truth the Court recommended a basic way of overcoming the constitutional issue, and government realized that the recommendations created sense, and the Act was effortlessly passed as amended. But the bitterness Basil had evinced recommended that he was 1 of the chief factors in the animosity the government felt towards the Chief Justice, which led to her getting impeached.

Given Basil’s undoubted abilities and energy, it was a pity that he saw himself as mainly a politician. Patronage became much more important than development, and he reinforced the concept that politicians need to make a decision on priorities, as when for instance the Ministry asked Members of Parliament to advocate disused fields that ought to be recommissioned. This should far more practically have come by way of consultations at village level, but that would have not won any brownie points, whereas providing economic support to locations chosen by politicians was much more beneficial in terms of escalating political capital.

This element became really preposterous when, in 2014, Basil decided that development projects must be the purview of Members of Parliament. Previously every single member of Parliament, which includes those in the opposition, was allocated what was termed a decentralized price range of Rs 5 million a year. This could be utilised generally at will, although there have been recommendations laid down and approval had to be obtained for proposals from the Ministry of Financial Improvement.

Then it was decided to give another Rs 30 million to selected government Members. The rationale for leaving other individuals out seemed to be that these folks chaired what were termed Divisional Improvement Committees. But in reality, when I brought the matter up at the Consultative Committee on Public Administration Reforms (to the consternation of the Minister, who stated I would get him into trouble) it was noted by a government Member that the point was to give them funds for patronage in the whole District in which they would be contesting. This was a consequence of the absurd electoral technique we had, whereby contestant, even though technically allotted constituencies, had to seek votes all through the District.

But evidently 30 million each and every was deemed inadequate, and the next step was to allocate hundreds of millions to pick Members. So in Trincomalee a single Member go over 600 million, and an additional more than 200 million. Some had been offered absolutely nothing, which led to vociferous protests, which led in turn to the Member who felt most difficult completed by becoming created a Deputy Minister, prior to Provincial Council elections in Uva, for which his support seemed crucial.

While some Members did consult the people and feel carefully about how these funds should be spent, other folks simply did what they wanted, and some undoubtedly ensured that they would benefit from commissions on what ever they undertook. Buildings therefore became critical, and little consideration was paid to training wants or business improvement.

But clearly improvement was seen as secondary to political popularity. And to make things worse, given that Basil was in Parliament, and observed as the major political agent of the loved ones, the President entrusted not just development activity to him, but also areas which he did not recognize at all. Therefore, early in the life of Parliament, he presented proposals to adjust the electoral method for neighborhood bodies, which were utterly incoherent. When ideas have been made for improvement, he declared that decisions had currently been created, and the Act would be introduced as drafted. But so numerous amendments were required when the Act came before Parliament, that it had to be withdrawn. When it was lastly reintroduced many months later, it was with a guarantee that it would be amended later to get rid of certain absurd provisions. Amongst these for instance was a clause that a distinct percentage of candidates may possibly be girls or young folks. Lumping each groups together, and then not making their involvement mandatory, was typical of an strategy that did not see principles as an integral element of politics.

With electoral considerations getting his priority, Basil was slow about what was significantly far more crucial, reform of Regional Government structures. This was planned, and a bill was drafted, but it was kept on the back burner. The Secretary to the Ministry, 1 of the brighter government officials, shared the draft with me after the Minister had consulted me about the electoral amendments. I discovered then that the consultation with the grass roots that the President had wanted had been perverted to introduce only nominees to the committees that have been to be established. Ironically this replicated the colonial mindset, where representatives of the folks had been nominated rather than elected. This principle had been opposed by Sri Lankans searching for political reform, so it was sad to see the paternalistic concept getting reintroduced.

There was no alter in this provision in the subsequent draft I saw, although I was gratified to see that some at least of my suggestions seemed to have been taken up. But that meant practically nothing given that the Bill lay forgotten as government moved into election mode with the decision to advance the date of the Presidential election. The Liberal Celebration did create to the President suggesting that he not waste the remaining years of his mandate, but as an alternative move on measures he had promised, and which had been in preparation for a number of years, for instance with regard to Education and Higher Education and Electoral and Local Government Reform. But the appeal fell on deaf years, as Basil began to set up electoral offices, with scant regard for the leadership of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, which had not been consulted on the matter.

Basil’s wider political role may possibly not be strictly germane to the gradual erosion of the hopes the nation had in the Rajapaksa government to promote peace and prosperity, in particular in the former conflict regions. But it needs to be recorded in view of the possibilities lost because of his lack of concern for national priorities. The failure to strategy coherently for the North, with certain reference to human resource development, was a single of the principal factors for the continuing bitterness of its citizens towards government. And the refusal to seek the advice of the folks was unbelievably callous in the context of a lately concluded conflict. That demanded assurance as to the primacy of the men and women of the area in government planning, but Basil had neither the wisdom nor the commitment to give this.

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Foreign Affairs

Save The SLFP From The Rajapaksa Dynasty

By Granville Perera

It is time that all those who think in the ideals of the Sri Lanka Freedom Celebration (SLFP) instantly gather about any opposition candidate who would genuinely perform towards abolishing the executive presidency and save the future of the SLFP.

Mahinda FamilyThose who fail to act now will comprehend that a 3rd Term for Mahinda Rajapaksa would make certain that Gota will succeed him and the baton would be passed on to Namal and there is no hope for any in the SLFP to climb up the ladder of executive workplace for the subsequent twenty 5 years or far more. What would be the fate of the SLFPers who have toiled all their lives to bring the celebration back in to energy, specially surviving the iron fisted rule set in motion by the late cunning fox – J R Jayewardene and the UNP rule of 17 years that disfranchised Madam Bandaranayike. These days, the old guards of the SLFP are confined to the old peoples home tagged as “Senior Ministers” and their future in politics systematically destroyed.

A notable and possibly the most corrupt soon after the Rajapaksa clan – Nimal Siripala de Silva was removed from his lucrative ministry of health and shoved to Irrigation and Mahaweli development to ensure that he would not be a future presidential competitor with his ill-gotten wealth. Now, when he is settling down to continue his corrupt practices, he has been brought down to earth with the debacle in Uva through the crafty use of Dilan Perera to attack him that ensured his electorate defeat.  The entire blame for the mediocre overall performance in Uva has been placed on Nimal Siripala in private discussions with the president. His file is already at the bribery commission in case of any attempt at defection. This has ensured that Nimal Siripala has been reined in and will not harbor any believed of sleeping with the enemy for worry of losing almost everything.  Maithripala on the other hand is one particular stubborn mule who nevertheless holds on, and a carrot of premiership has been provided, but Maithripala knows better.  Gota will be the next prime minister, ought to Mahinda get his threerd term. If there is enough numbers that would cross over to the opposition along with Chandrika and Maithripala, the man from Polonnaruwa will turn out to be the obvious option for the frequent candidate. In such a situation, how will the UNPers vote? Would they trust the SLFPer? Much more importantly, will the Sajith clan accept Maithripala? Will Ranil genuinely contemplate supporting? The million dollar query would be – will Maithripala be happy in a non-executive presidency?

What ever the decision that the old guard of the SLFP take will make or break the SLFP. Should they support an opposition candidate to defeat Mahinda Rajapaksa, they have the opportunity of constructing a coalition to challenge the UNP in the parliamentary elections that would stick to which could elect a government that would be answerable to the parliament. With the divided UNP, it is the SLFP that stands the most significant chance of forming a effective alliance. The JVP too would be far more inclined to help a SLFP coalition than one led by the UNP whom they nevertheless think about as traitors since of Ranil’s peace procedure with the LTTE.

The only selection left for Ranil is possibly to assistance fielding the most capable common candidate and get him elected so that he has the chance of becoming a strong premier. Never ever in his dreams must he entertain the thought of contesting Mahinda Rajapaksa as he is a brand that can not be marketed. Most would admit that Ranil is greatest suited to steer the nation out of the financial mess that has been the hallmark of the SLFP, but an individual else need to win the election for him.

The crisis with the JHU has exploded beyond the expectations of the Rajapaksa clan. Pavithra is no spring chicken to blurt out corruption charges on Champika Ranawaka out of the blues. It was Basil’s strategy to rein in Champika and the JHU to help the Rajapaksa third term which entirely back-fired due to the amateurish handling of it. What ever kickbacks that came Champika’s way from the contracts was not taken by him, but was taken more than by the JHU which was in deep monetary crisis. This was with the full approval of His Excellency Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The self proclaimed Mr clean who ditched Chandrika and sought refuge in USA claiming her to be the Chaura Rajina (Queen of deceit), Dullas Alahapperuma is almost certainly the schemer for the Rajapaksas. His capability to hold throwing stones at absolutely everyone displaying his huge grip almost certainly has cost Mahinda Rajapaksa his 3rd term. With Maithripala packing his bags and Wasantha Senanayake set to go, the flood gates would soon open, and then it would be as well late for Mahinda to withdraw in to his presidential cocoon. There is no 1 to blame but himself for creating his own down fall.

Categories
Foreign Affairs

Single Digit Inflation For five Years: Now The Challenge Is To Get Out Of ‘Lowflation Trap’

By W.A Wijewardena –

Dr. W.A. Wijewardena

Dr. W.A. Wijewardena

Driving down CCPI through administrative measures

When the annual enhance in the price of living of typical consumers in Colombo and suburbs declined from three.5% in September to 1.six% in October 2014, the Central Bank could not hide its joy. In its press release on Inflation in October, the Bank has said that ‘inflation has declined significantly in October’ (obtainable at: Inflation declines significantly in October).

In additional elaborating this claim, the Bank has stated that “Inflation, as measured by the change in the Colombo Consumers’ Value Index (CCPI) (2006/07=100), which is computed by the Division of Census and Statistics, decreased from 3.5 per cent recorded in September 2014 to 1.six% in October 2014, on a year-on-year (YoY) basis, which is the lowest considering that November 2009”.

The downward revision of the ‘electricity tariff by 25% supported by comparable reduction in costs of LP gas, petrol and diesel’ by means of administrative decisions by the government in the last two months have been the primary motives for this decline in the price of living, according to the Central Bank. Because the products beneath reference together with rent on homes and water bills have a high weight of 24% in CCPI, even a minor reduction in the costs can result in a substantial fall in the all round CCPI worth in a specific month.

Hence, even though there was a marginal enhance in the food and non-alcoholic beverages in October, such improve could not influence the general index value regardless of it has a share at 41% in the index. Yet, the total expenditure which a customer has to incur in order to get the basket of goods and solutions in CCPI has improved, according to values provided by Division of Census and Statistics or DCS, from Rs. 49,259 a year ago to Rs. 50,070 in October 2014. However, the expenditure on this basket in September 2014 amounted to Rs. 50,881 and therefore there is a slight easing of the cost of living in October 2014.

The reductions in electrical energy tariff and the rates of power are not repeatable each and every month. Therefore, a repeat overall performance of this beneficial outcome in the coming months is unlikely.

Can the Central Bank be pleased about the development?

Ought to the Central Bank be happy about this improvement? For two causes, it ought to be a tiny far more restrained in expressing its happiness. One particular is that it does not go along with the Central Bank’s co-objective of ‘economic and cost stability’. The other is that it portends a larger extended term dilemma now know as ‘lowflation trap’.

Central Bank’s new mandate is to have both economic and price stability

Let’s now turn to the initial issue. In an amendment accomplished to the Bank’s governing legislation recognized as the Monetary Law Act in 2002, the Bank’s objective of maintaining a steady common price level in the economy was re-designated as ‘economic and value stability’. This is somewhat peculiar due to the fact in all other central banks, it is just maintaining price stability. Why this was accomplished in the case of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka was explained in detail by this writer in a preceding report in this series beneath title ‘Central Bank’s Mandate is to attain each financial and cost stability’ (offered here ).

Rajapaksa, Cabraal, Basil Rajapaksa speak during the presentation of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka annual report 2010, in ColomboThe broadening of the mandate to economic and price tag stability was due to the foresight of the then Governor of the Bank, A.S. Jayawardena, popularly identified as AS. When the Globe Bank, IMF and even this writer were opposed to the particular term, AS had a simple but a very cogent explanation. He mentioned that what a central bank must seek to attain is the stability in the general macroeconomy and not a mere price index. Simply because, according to him, a cost index can be manipulated to record a slower development via value controls, subsidies or mere price tag reductions carried out administratively. Such measures will certainly ease the burden of expense of living. But they will not assist a central bank simply because these actions develop imbalances elsewhere creating it difficult for a central bank to attain its objective of maintaining a stable economy.
The purpose of adding the term ‘economic’ is, therefore, to remind the future central bankers that they ought to not be content about a mere decline in the consumers’ price index. They need to be satisfied only when such decreases have come from the monetary policy actions taken by the Bank without generating imbalances elsewhere in the economy.

Reduction of rates of loss makers creates concerns for the fiscal sector

The present reductions in electrical energy tariff and rates of LP gas, petrol and diesel by means of administrative measures do not fall in line with the above financial wisdom. Except LP gas, the other three item supplying companies in Sri Lanka are running at a enormous loss as documented by the Committee on Public Enterprises or COPE in its current reports to Parliament. Accordingly, the cumulative losses of the electricity supplier, CEB, during 2011-13 had amounted to Rs. 47 billion and these of the fuel supplier, CPC, had amounted to Rs. 193 billion.

These losses have to be recouped by the Treasury by raising funds either by means of increased taxation or by borrowing. What the Treasury has done in the past to make good these losses is to situation particular Treasury bonds to these institutions which the public has to repay on a future date by paying much more taxes or foregoing existing public services. Thus, there is already an imbalance in the fiscal sector of the nation. Therefore, the present cost reductions involving loss-creating public enterprises and thereby worsening the fiscal imbalance are not a development about which the Central Bank could be happy if it follows its mandate properly.

Lack of credit development despite inducements

Sri Lanka has knowledgeable a deceleration in the growth of its customer value index, CCPI, from around late 2009. The long term inflation shown by this deceleration became a single digit quantity and that single digit number also started falling over the years. What is shown as 1.six% growth in CCPI in October 2014 for the duration of the final 12-month period is the lowest worth of the single digit number ever recorded in the final five years. Responding to the decline in the single digit number, the Central Bank commenced relaxing its monetary policy with an announced objective of supporting the government’s economic growth initiatives. This was completed in a number of rounds in diverse forms.

Credit expansion in the economy was promoted explicitly by the Central Bank by releasing a substantial amount of money which industrial banks had to keep with the Central Bank as a compulsory reserve – recognized as the Statutory Reserve Requirement or SRR – in July 2013 by lowering the necessary ratio from 8% to 6%. The quantity so released was about Rs. 590 billion which if banks had employed for credit expansion would have generated added loans of Rs. two,950 billion by about December 2014.

But this did not occur. Credit to private sector elevated only by Rs. 21 billion among July 2013 and July 2014. In reality, credit to public corporations declined by Rs. 37 billion more than this period. Even the lending to government by commercial banks did not increase appreciably it improved only by Rs. 53 billion after the changes in government deposits with industrial banks are netted off. Despite the reported high financial growth of over 7% during this period, naturally the private sector did not wish to utilise bank credit for financing their activities.

As a result, in a desperate attempt to push credit to the economy, the Central Bank commenced lowering interest prices by cutting its rate on excess money deposited by commercial banks from 7.5% to 6.5%. Typical fixed deposit prices of industrial banks fell from 12.38% in October 2013 to 8.09% in October 2014. Amongst September 2013 and September 2014, the average lending rates of industrial banks fell from 15.52% to 12.98%. Regardless of the cut in interest prices, industrial bank credit flows to the economy did not improve by the magnitudes by which they ought to have elevated. It just appeared that the fall in lending prices of commercial banks was not a enough inducement for borrowers to raise funds from banks.

A country in a lowflation trap

This predicament evidences that Sri Lanka is caught up in a ‘lowflation trap’, a malaise at present being seasoned by EU countries. When the inflation price comes down sharply and holds at those low levels for some time, there ought to be a faster reduction in lending prices to produce a decline in true lending prices – the necessity for inducing borrowers to use bank credit.

When the average inflation rate was at 23% in 2008, the typical lending prices of commercial banks were about 20%, yielding a damaging actual lending price in the economy on typical. It is a substantial inducement for borrowers to borrow. But when the inflation rate fell, lending rates of industrial banks did not fall in the identical style. Accordingly, when the typical inflation price was around 7% at end-2013, the average lending rates of commercial banks stood at 15%. The actual interest rates in terms of these numbers had been substantially optimistic at about 8% – certainly not an inducement for borrowers to seek funds from industrial banks. By September 2014, on the insistence of the Central Bank that industrial banks must reduce their lending rates, the typical lending rate fell to about 13% but inflation had fallen much more sharply to 3.5% by that time. Therefore, the actual interest rate had increased to 9.5%.

In October 2014, the situation has turn into a lot much more vital: Inflation rate has fallen further to 1.6% escalating the true lending rates to over 10%. In this situation, banks can not be blamed for not giving loans to clients because consumers have no incentive to seek bank credit at higher true interest prices.

To reduce or not to reduce interest rates?

If inflation rate remains under three% over the next two to 3 years, Sri Lanka can not get out of the lowflation trap unless it cuts its interest rates drastically by about five to 6%. This signifies Central Bank’s standard deposit price need to be about 1%, its common lending rate around two%, 1-year Treasury bill rate around two%, commercial bank deposit prices about three% and industrial bank lending prices about 6%. But that will produce severe imbalances across the economy thereby frustrating Central Bank’s try at attaining each financial and cost stability. It may possibly solve a issue in 1 area but it might generate many far more troubles in other regions. In other words, an artificially driven-down inflation rate will not help the Central Bank to preserve macroeconomic stability across the economy.

A low interest rate regime at around the levels talked about above is not feasible in Sri Lanka due to three factors.

CCPI numbers coming out of a black box

In the first spot, there are issues about the credibility of the inflation numbers released by DCS. Considering that the entire approach of preparing CCPI is not topic to a post-audit verification by a technically competent authority, the numbers are just released by DCS from out of a black box. What is taking place inside the black box is not visible to anyone. For instance, in October 2014, one particular of the reasons adduced for the decline in CCPI has been the so known as reduction in electricity tariff. But the actual electricity bills received by consumers for the month of October did not show such a reduction. In the case of this writer’s monthly electricity bill, per unit tariff for 200 units had enhanced from Rs. 21.25 in September 2014 to Rs. 23.91 in October 2014.

It is not clear no matter whether DCS had taken into account the actual electricity bills paid by the group of buyers represented in CCPI – the very first 80% of the expenditure units in Colombo and suburbs – or just gone by the announcement made by the government. Therefore, the ordinary public appears to be harbouring the belief that the CCPI numbers released by DCS are far from reality.

In such a scenario, the demand for greater wages, salaries, allowances and fees can’t be avoided. A lot of of the reliefs provided to the public in the Price range 2015 – enhance in the salaries of public servants, requesting the private sector do the very same, increase in the Mahapola scholarship allowances, payment of a special subsidy to senior citizens on their savings with banks – have been created in recognition of the elevated cost of living in spite of the deceleration in inflation price as calculated by DCS.

Artificially-low interest rates will worsen the external sector imbalances

Second, if inflation numbers are not realistic, the reduction in interest prices will certainly discourage savings and induce consumption and for that matter, the consumption of imported goods. This is shown by the higher registration of motor vehicles in the current previous, specifically motorbikes where much more than 1,500 motorbikes are registered per working day. Hence, a low interest rate regime is like providing a blank cheque to somebody as far as consumption and imports are concerned. Regardless of the deceleration in the growth of imports and better overall performance in exports, this year’s trade deficit is probably to be around $ 8 billion. Thus, a blank cheque by way of lowered interest prices will worsen the current imbalance in the external sector requiring the nation to borrow more to fill the gap.

Low interest prices not great for foreign hot income

Third, Sri Lanka has relied on foreign hot money to build its foreign reserves by permitting foreigners to invest in higher yielding government paper. Such funds, amounting to $ 3.5 billion as at end October and accounting for about 40% of total official foreign reserves, have been attracted by Sri Lanka primarily by supplying greater yields on government securities when in the home nations of these investors, the maximum yield receivable has been about 1%. This incentive will be narrowed and ultimately be unfavorable if Sri Lanka reduces its interest prices to a low level. In such a scenario, the outflow of these funds can not be avoided worsening the existing imbalance in the external sector. It will put stress on the rupee to further depreciate with adverse consequences on Sri Lanka’s future development plans.

In view of the lowflation trap in which Sri Lanka is now caught, the decline in the price of growth in CCPI is not a development about which the Central Bank can be content at all.

W.A. Wijewardena, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, can be reached at [email protected]

Categories
Foreign Affairs

UNP Urges Rambukwella To Unblock Colombo Telegraph

A important member of the Opposition United National Party on Friday urged Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella to unblock Colombo Telegraph, claiming that it offers views of a broad section of society and not news.

UNP MP Dr Harsha de Silva has created this request for the duration of his speech in parliament on the budget. He mentioned that the curb on media freedom has resulted in a number of internet sites being utilised to market news and views.

Earlier in the day, Media Minister Rambukwella denied there were attempts by the government to curb media freedom in Sri Lanka. Another UNP MP Sujeewa Senasinghe mentioned that several journalists have been forced to flee the nation out of fear.

Harsha De Silva Colombo telegraph

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Categories
Foreign Affairs

Another Term Of This Madness?

By Tisaranee Gunasekara

“Negligent, ambitious, and perverse Princes are the real causes of public misfortunes.” – D’Holbach (Excellent Sense Without having God)

This month, a female university-entrant fell off a seven-foot wall and suffered spinal injuries[i], even though participating in the Leadership Coaching Programme in an army camp.

The military spokesman says the wall was just six feet high. Let’s think him.

What sort of ‘leadership training’ entails jumping from a six-foot wall? Armed robbery? Kidnapping? Movie stunts?

Mahinda HitlerWhat is the logic of herding students into army camps and forcing them to engage in mindless and useless pursuits which have no place in a normal law-abiding civilian existence?

The leadership education programme is a close to best symbol of Rajapaksa pondering and Rajapaksa governance. It is unnecessary, does no good to anyone and senseless virtually to the point of insanity. It has not achieved any of its stated aims. The execrable practice of ragging continues the only distinction is that freshers get ragged twice &#8211 by the military as nicely as by seniors. (The Leadership Education Programme may broaden the sadistic horizons of future raggers, teaching them more degrading, hazardous and inhuman ways to torture the next batch).

The Leadership Education is a waste of everyone’s time and everyone’s money.

But it will not be scrapped due to the fact it is a brainchild of Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Scrapping the programme would be akin to admitting that the Rajapaksas can make blunders, which violates a essential maxim of Rajapaksa rule – Rajapaksa infallibility.

The leadership instruction programme also provides a clear warning of the future awaiting Sri Lanka, if Mahinda Rajapaksa wins a third term.

Mahinda is not just Mahinda. Mahinda is Basil and Gotabaya, Namal and Shashindra, siblings, nephews, nieces, cousins and in-laws. And acolytes, always acolytes, those pawns empowered and glorified for 1 crowded hour &#8211 or two. There will usually be Sajin Vass Gunawardanes, Sampath Chandrapushpas, Duminda Silvas and Mervyn Silvas (and their sons) and Galagoda-Atte Gnanasaras. The Rajapaksas cannot rule without them.

Is this the future we want?

This is the future we will have, if Mahinda Rajapaksa wins a third term.

Mahinda Rajapaksa defeated the LTTE. He did not do so alone but let that be. Is defeating the LTTE a logical cause to give him a third term, understanding what he and his brothers did in the second term?

Make Mahinda Rajapaksa a gazetted national hero. Give him all the accolades and statues his megalomanic heart craves for. Rename every public facility following him. Make his birthday a national vacation. Have an annual parade honouring him. But do not give him a third term, so that he can institutionalise familial rule and render dynastic succession inevitable.

It is only in fairy tales that the monster-slayer gets the country as a reward. This is actual life.

Mahinda Rajapaksa is indubitably a friendly man. Fine set up a Mr. Conviviality award and give it to him every single year. But that is not a good adequate reason to vote for him, realizing what he will do and what he will enable his brothers, relatives and acolytes to do.

Mahinda Rajapaksa cannot defend national sovereignty. He is in the method of turning Sri Lanka into a Chinese protectorate. Mahinda Rajapaksa cannot create peace. He has failed to reconcile the Tamils whilst antagonising the Muslims and the Christians.

The only way Mahinda Rajapaksa can defend territorial integrity is by igniting another unnecessary war with an additional minority and winning it – right after a number of much more decades of bloodshed and mayhem.

Mahinda Rajapaksa’s thought of development is to create expressways, airports and ports, although ordinary folks like, his personal Sinhala-base, sink into greater want.

Do we want the Rajapaksas – and that means all the Rajapaksas, not this or that Rajapaksa, simply because theirs is a loved ones business – to rule this nation for at least six a lot more years?

Do we want Gotabaya Rajapaksa in parliament, poised to step into his brother’s presidential shoes, legally and constitutionally?

Do we want a entirely degraded judiciary? Do we want judges who are manifestly the pawns of the rulers?

Do we want the new Rajapaksa commonsense to grow to be hegemonic? Do we want impunity, abuse and corruption to turn out to be the only normal the next generation of Lankans know?

Do we want the militarization of economy, civil society and our minds? Do we want a morality which despises the weak and worships the powerful and the effective?

Do we want a nation which can’t defend its most vulnerable (children and the elderly) even as it spends most of the national wealth on defence?

Do we want an acolyte-capitalism and a serfocratic administration, a nation exactly where Dhammika Pereras rule the economy and Sajin Vaas Gunawardanes thump Chris Nonises?

Do we want a nation where advancement and security depends on slavish obedience to Rajapaksas?

Do we want Sri Lanka to grow to be a battleground of regional and international powers?

Do Sinhalese want a lasting peace or a new war with one more minority?

Do Tamils want to live under de facto occupation, a life of worsening humiliation, powerlessness and insecurity?

Do Muslims want to grow to be the new Tamils?

Do Christians want to live like second class citizens?

Dislodging the Rajapaksas will not solve all Lankan troubles. But the absolute majority of Lankan difficulties can’t be solved without dislodging the Rajapaksas.

The Final Trapdoor

Defeating the Rajapaksas becomes an uphill job with every single passing year. Not due to the fact the Rajapaksas turn into far more well-known, but because the Rajapaksas make the politico-electoral playing field much more uneven, from within.

But economic discontent is growing, specifically among the Sinhalese (as the CPA survey reveals). That provides the opposition a trapdoor of opportunity, a decent opportunity of pushing the election into a second round. For the opposition, an outright victory is not necessary preventing an outright victory by the Rajapaksas will suffice because it can result in a political tsunami, such as within the SLFP.

If the Rajapaksas win the presidency, they will move swiftly to neutralise the most efficient figures in the opposition. As soon as the opposition is reeling from attacks, arrests, calumnies and internal squabbles, the parliamentary election can be held. When a Rajapaksa occupies the PM post, the Achilles Heel of familial rule will be no far more.

Life has not improved for Tamils and Muslims during the second Rajapaksa term. But has life turn into much better and happier for the Sinhala majority during the second Rajapaksa term? The Sinhala-South may possibly not be interested in the atrocities committed throughout the war and in the aftermath. They may possibly be indifferent to Tamil and Muslim problems and fears. But has the situation of the Sinhala-South enhanced for the duration of the second Rajapaksa term? Are Sinhalese greater off socio-economically, a lot more safe and much more hopeful about the future than they were in 2010? Are they satisfied about the path in which the Rajapaksas are taking the nation? Are they willing to sacrifice the fundamental rights they take so much for granted and the prospect of a far more peaceful and prosperous future, for the sake of a dead or an unseen enemy?

The Rajapaksas will attempt to muddy the waters of our thinking by screaming about Tigers and Jihadists, traitors and conspirators, so that we forget the actual situation.

Do we want a Rajapaksa future? 


[i] http://www.bbc.co.uk/sinhala/sri_lanka/2014/11/141111_thisara_leadership_course

Categories
Foreign Affairs

Wonderful Betrayal Of The Peoples’ Executive Power And Judicial Energy

By Nagananda Kodituwakku –

Nagananda Kodituwakku

Nagananda Kodituwakku

Both the Executive President Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa and Mr Mohan Pieris appointed to the workplace of the Chief Justice have taken oath as required by post 32 and 107 and Fourth Schedule of the Constitution, to carry out the duties and discharge the functions of their respective Offices and to uphold and defend the Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka to the very best of their ability.

The complete nation is totally aware that Mr Mohan Pieris was appointed to the Workplace of the Chief Justice by the President Rajapaksa, when there was no vacancy existed in the office and by forcibly denying the incumbent Chief Justice, Dr Shirani Bandaranayake of her correct to carry out the duties of workplace of the Chief Justice. In quick Mr Mohan Pieris need to have been fully conscious that accepting the workplace of the Chief Justice when there was no vacancy was clearly a violation of the law and in the provided circumstances any oath or affirmation taken to uphold the office of the Chief Justice would turn into void from the starting and thereby any selection made by him or by any bench appointed by him would have no legal impact at all. They are bound to be declared invalid when the Rule of Law is restored in this nation and therefore the billions of taxpayer’s funds spent on the Supreme Court in the course of his period would go waste.

Contesting for twond term of the Executive President

The Individuals of this country are fully aware that President Rajapaksa did utter no word for the duration of his election campaign for a second term, in search of a mandate from the individuals to amend the Constitution, enabling him to contest for a third term. For that reason enacting an amendment to the Constitution (for a third term), which only gives for two terms in office beneath the prior law was not only unlawful and but morally a wrongful act on the element of the President and amounts to violation of the oath taken in terms of the 4th Schedule of the Constitution.

Declaration for Presidential Election nicely just before the end of term in office with intent to contest for a threerd time

Mahinda Mohan PThe shelf life of the workplace of the President is nonetheless two a lot more years from completion but the President calls for an election with a fantastic craving for reelection. And there are several arguments against this move on the basis that President can’t contest for a third term as he has been elected beneath the preceding law which permits only two terms with no expressed provision in the amendment, accommodating the one particular in office also to turn out to be eligible.  This argument is straightforward and simple and there is no ambiguity at all about the retrospective impact of the 18th amendment in the absence of expressed provision in the amended law supplying otherwise. And on the other hand there is no question of law arisen, which is of such public value to receive the opinion of the Supreme Court, whereas the problem raised is purely concerning the interests of an person.

Insulting the intelligence of the people

Yet, having doubts about his eligibility, President Rajapaksa has resorted to abuse the provisions of Section 129 of the Constitution that is meant to be used in matters concerning national value and not on any particular person. Relying on this provision of law the President has sought the opinion of the Supreme Court on 05th Nov 2014 and currently the President himself and several of Cabinet Ministers have expressed their self-confidence in ‘the would be ruling’ and challenged these who oppose the move of the President to go prior to the Supreme Court.

The Registrar of the Court has now notified the Bar Association about the President’s reference and known as for only written submissions, if any, on the matter prior to 07th Nov 2014, which would be decided by the Court in private.

One particular can clearly argue that this act by the Supreme Court clearly amounts to be a betrayal of the people’s judicial power as the Judiciary of this country workout routines people’s judicial energy on trust and not the judicial energy of the executive president in workplace.

This hasty choice generating, denying a fair opportunity to the people, becomes more severe as there is no urgency whatsoever and not even a date for such an election has been declared but by the government. The President of the Bar Association, Mr Upul Jayasuriya says that the ‘hearing’ on the matter has been concluded in a double swift time on the Presidents reference.

In this background the only hope for the individuals is that a future government would take corrective measures to restore the rule of law and great governance in this country and would take measures to deal appropriately with these who continue to abuse the Executive, Legislature or Judiciary Offices for improper considerations.

It is prudent to each and every Statesman to understand from the history. For instance, Adolf Hitler reestablished the pride of Germany as a nation following the World War I. And if he had ended his political career or died ahead of 1939, (ahead of the World War II), he would have been admired and respected as 1 of the greatest Statesmen in the German history, but endless craving for energy brought him down from a national hero to zero. The living instance is Burkina Faso exactly where the Executive President had tried for a third term and ultimately had to flee the nation to save his life.

What the President of Sri Lanka should contemplate is that he ought to leave all the good items he did for the nation given that his election to the Workplace to go into the history intact. Endless craving for energy only brings disaster for men and women as effectively as for their respective nations.

How can one forget the fate of our friendly nation Libya, purely because of the dismal failure on the part of Colonel Muammer Gadaffi to step down in the right time as a national hero!

Categories
Foreign Affairs

Presidential Hopeful Karu Jayasuriya Must Disclose Connection With News Sites

In the wake of many news web sites very essential of the Government of Sri Lanka giving sudden prominence to UNP Gampaha District Parliamentarian and Chairman of the UNP’s Leadership Council Karu Jayasuriya, Colombo Telegraph is compelled to question him on the nature of his connection with these who operate these web sites.

KaruAccording to media reports this past week Karu Jayasuriya now seems to be the top contender as the presidential candidate proposed by the opposition parties, other feasible choices former President Chandrika Kumaranatunga, Leader of the UNP Ranil Wickremesinghe, and Ven Maduluwawe Sobhitha Thera, the convener of the National Movement for Social Justice.

On October 23rd, Karu Jayasuriya telephoned the Colombo Telegraph editor and presented him a monthly payment of Rs 50,000/- ‘in appreciation of the operate that Colombo Telegraph does’. Jayasuriya did not state for how extended this payment was to be created. The situation did not arise since the editor politely declined the supply.  The editor, additionally, reminded Jayasuriya that it was he who interviewed him when he 1st came in to politics in 1995. At that time Jayasuriya had told the journalist that he hoped he would continue perform towards the independence of the media. The Colombo Telegraph editor pointed out to Jayasuriya that he functions these days as an independent media entity and said he did not want any income.

A single week soon after the aforementioned phone get in touch with, Karu Jayasuriya has been offered a lot of prominence in a number of news web sites.  Colombo Telegraph is for that reason compelled to ask Karu Jayasuriya whether or not he had created a equivalent provide to those who run these web sites ‘in appreciation of the work they do’ or for any other cause.

Colombo Telegraph feels it is Jayasuriya&#8217s duty to disclose the nature of his partnership with the said sites, specifically in view of the fact that Jayasuriya was the really individual who campaigned for the Appropriate to Information and transparency.

Categories
Foreign Affairs

A Unique Malwattiya For God Kataragama

By Shyamon Jayasinghe –

Shyamon Jayasinghe

Shyamon Jayasinghe

In today’s Lankadeepa I read a story about the Kataragama Devale that made me wonder if I had travelled in time toward somewhere in the 10th  century in Sri Lanka. This story is mentioned to be primarily based on an account provided by the chief Kapumahattaya of the Devale, Mr Somipala Ratnayake. Claimed as obtaining been written by the ‘editorial board,’ the story, as a result, is invested with some authority and official stamp from what goes as the most well-known Sinhala every day in Sri Lanka. It is an axiom that newspapers have a tendency to reflect the good quality of its readership. If that be so, oh what faith can we have about Sri Lanka making any headway with a sort of media like this and a type of 10th  century gullible population?

The story begins by saying that the God Kataragama is a most strong deity. He is none other than the regional ruler, King Mahasena. The site of the Devale is in reality the web site where the king’s palace had after been. Now, there isn’t a shred of historical proof to help this statement but that doesn’t worry the ‘editorial board.’ Far more to come: The Buddha after visited this spot and gave a sermon to the king. No proof at all that the Buddha ever came to Sri Lanka. But no worries continue. Possessing listened to the sermon, the king quickly reached the state of ‘Sovan.’ What magic! Just a single sermon and hey presto the king shoots up into a sublime state. Was the Buddha so seductive?

When the king reached that state he had requested the Buddha for a ‘pooja wattiya.’ This indicates an providing. Height of cheek, I believed! The Buddha felt about his head pulled out a lock of hair and gave it to the king as his offering. Treasure hunters, right here is a winning aim for you: this lock of hair is buried under the present Kiri Vehera. Our political heavyweights can head toward this spot and hold digging beneath the base of the Vihara like termites. Now that they don’t seem in Parliament for critical company they could turn into treasure hunters.

King Mahasena eventually passed away in India and reappeared as the deity of Kataragama. Why did he go to India at all? The ‘editorial board’ is pleased accepting such bull. The deity when met King Dutugemunu and gave his blessing to fight King Elara. Why on earth did a deity show favour like this to one of the warring parties? In addition to, King Elara, according to historical records, had been a benevolent king who even did a lot for the Buddha Sasana. He would not have reigned for forty years had he not received well-liked assistance from the Sinhalese folks. The story gives a clue and that is that Dutugemunu had had a deal with the deity to build a palace with gold tiles and make arrangements for day-to-day poojas to the deity. If this wasn’t plain bribery then what was it? If this was his behaviour the deity could not have been the exact same particular person who had morphed into ‘Sovan’ soon after receiving Buddha’s one power-packed sermon.

The war won, King Dutugemunu returned to Kataragama Wedihitikande, met the deity and announced that he is about to fulfill his guarantee of the palace.

This complete crap of a story written by ‘the editorial board’ of the Lankadeepe mercifully ends with an outstanding prophetic statement alleged to have been produced by the deity who declined to accept the promised gift. The deity said: “Oh King! There is no point in creating luxury palaces even for me due to the fact very quickly the country will face a ‘kali yugaya’ (evil period) when men and women will no longer worship the Buddha or the deities. Consequently, Oh king, refrain from your great creating plans. Individuals will destroy them all. Create one thing quite modest.”

That Kali Yugaya has arrived nowadays. Praise be to the deity of Kataragama! The deity deserves a ‘malwattiya’ for that bit of prophetic warning.

Readers, if you take place to check out Kataragama you ought to follow the guidance of Mr. Ratnayake who in this fairy tale explains that the deity personally appears on Tuesdays. “As he arrives, a red light sweeps across the Devale,” says Mr Ratnayake.

If any of you have noticed this red light you are bloody fortunate. A word of caution: be sure it is not the chief Kapuwa himself who emanates the light.

Categories
Foreign Affairs

Marie Colvin As Mouthpiece Of The LTTE In 2009

By Michael Roberts

Dr. Michael Roberts

Dr. Michael Roberts

Having come across Tammita-Delgoda’s 2009 article “Reading between the Lines” for the first time in 2014, I reproduced it in Thuppahi for several reasons. His essay reveals how significant figures in the Western media world participated actively in the highly effective propaganda war sustained by the LTTE networks abroad working in coordination with the Tiger directorate in the Vanni, armed as the Tigers were with modern satellite technology.

As Tammita-Delgoda’s news account indicates, Marie Colvin, an intrepid war correspondent who ultimately paid a price of death for her boldness when she was caught in crossfire in Syria in 2012, was one of those partial to the LTTE camp. Eight years earlier, in March-April 2001, she had used her Tamil connections to slip beyond the Government of Sri Lanka’s (GSL) frontlines into the territory of Thamilīlam, the de facto state of the LTTE, and was injured when returning. The details surrounding this incident are highly relevant to our examination of journalistic ethics and are addressed at length below. It is adequate for the moment to note Colvin’s well-known “empathy for the underdog” and her devotion to the plight of civilians in war-torn arenas (DBS Jeyaraj 2012)

It is common for anthropologists and other ethnographers as well as journalists to develop rapport with the people in foreign arenas where they research or gather stories. Shyam Tekwani, Anita Pratap and a BBC team were among the few who entered LTTE territory during war periods to engage in reportage. Frances Harrison was based in Colombo as BBC correspondent from 2000-04 which included the ceasefire period from 2001 when access to Thamilīlam was easier; while the Dushiyanthini Kanagasbapathypillai’s position as her aide facilitated interaction with Tamils in Colombo as well as those in Thamilīlam.

Marie Colvin

Marie Colvin

The degree to which such rapport dictates the content of reportage is the issue which all readers must assess on a case by case basis. That is the central focus of this survey. Does a reporter or ethnographer become captive to the struggles of the people studied — whether from ideological bonding or sympathy or both? Tekwani managed to retain an independent perspective on the Tigers (see Ross 2010 and Tekwani 2009). But what can we say about Marie Colvin?

Colvin’s sympathy for the underdog and for radical causes appears to have rendered her into a mouthpiece for Tiger propaganda. Let’s take one instance: the title of a report filed on 22 April 2009 in the Sunday Times runs “Artillery pounds wounded Tamils trapped on beach.” As such, the heading misleads the British public: it does not tell them that the Tamil civilians were “trapped” because the LTTE was using them as (a) hostages; (b) a defensive formation and (c) a means of inspiring international intervention by developing a picture, in crescendo voice, of “an impending humanitarian disaster.” The latter emphasis, a critical and central strategy of the LTTE,[1] was missed out entirely or underplayed in virtually all international reportage on the war by the US embassy,[2] UN agencies and a clutch of newspapers who did attend to the hostage factor in late 2008 and early 2009. It is to the credit of Frances Harrison that she bucks the trend and discerns this dimension of LTTE policy in Still Counting the Dead.[3]

It was the second of these goals that was the foundation of LTTE strategy.[4] As such, this goal directed the organisation’s propaganda tactics. To this end it deployed (1) reports from the Tamil medical personnel working in their territory;[5] (2) verbal and other accounts conveyed by Tamil functionaries in INGOs, among them ICRC personnel, who were still operating within the declining space of Thamilīlam; (3) leavened occasionally by the accounts of foreigners such as Harun Khan and Dalziel of the ICRC who had brief spells in the Vanni Pocket;[6] and (4) clever misinformation and disinformation planted in the minds of liberal radical journalists (both foreign and local) located in Colombo — with Ravi Nessman of Associated Press[7] and Gordon Weiss, Media Officer for the UN agencies in Colombo, being among their most effective cat’s-paws.

As Muralidhar Reddy, correspondent for The Hindu in Colombo and an experienced hand in that arena, remarked:

“The only source of western reporters based out of Colombo during the last phases of war, other than the Defence Ministry, were the LTTE cadre doctors and auxiliary staff. Amazingly all the doctors in the field were not only armed with satellite phones but happily accessible to Colombo journalists. [Few] Colombo based journos [raised questions as to how] doctors amid all the blood and gore could spare time to speak to journalists. It is their version of the battle zone which dominated the world space that time. Every single person of my tribe outside Sri Lanka has never bothered to wonder how come every single doctor and the auxiliary staff emerged unscathed from the battle zone” (email to Roberts, December 2013).

Indeed, Gethin Chamberlain told readers of the Guardian on the 13th May 2009 that the doctors “were the eyes and ears of the world” (Waidytilake 2012). Of the 25 articles on the war in Sri Lanka over April and May, nine Guardian headlines used words attributed to the doctors, while 20 articles referred to the accusations of widespread bombing and heavy casualties (Waidytilake 2012).

The gullible acceptance of the half-truths and fabrications mixed with factual truths (there certainly were civilian casualties) purveyed by the medical men and Tamil NGO functionaries located within the Vanni Pocket,[8] a prison corral set up by the LTTE, extended beyond Colombo and its bourgeois salons to the powerful media networks in London, Manchester, New York and other centres in the West. Here the reports conveyed by TamilNet were bolstered by the horror stories retailed by numerous Tamils whose understandable anxieties and emotional voices girded the truth-effect of their tales. The force of these tales was compounded by the agit-prop campaigns of LTTE associations and Tamil community organisations in these countries (e.g. CNN 2009).

There is room to conjecture that several news agencies and several well-placed Western journalists were in the pockets of the LTTE because of their liberal or radical leanings and specific friendships with key LTTE figures built up over time. When Balasingham Nadesan and Seevaratnam Puleedevan, the LTTE’s political commissars, frantically appealed for Western intervention to save the Tiger command as the SL Army was at the ‘door’ of their bunkers on the night of 17th May 2009, Marie Colvin was among the conduits they turned to.[9] Colvin is known to have promised to weigh in. She did: “she woke up the UN Special envoy Vijay Nambiar[10] at midnight and obtained an assurance from him” to the effect that he would make arrangements for “the safe surrender of some senior LTTE personalities and around 2000 civilians” (DBS Jeyaraj 2012) — an impossible project at that stage as anyone with ears to the ground in Colombo could have told both her and Nambiar. What matters here, however, is this evidence, this measure of Marie Colvin’s commitment to the LTTE leadership, its fascism[11] notwithstanding.

This leaning had developed from 2001, if not earlier. Because of her sympathy and interest in radical causes she visited Sri Lanka in March-April 2001 as an accredited Sunday Times correspondent. This was at a point when the government forces had been severely mauled by the LTTE war machine during Eelam War III and when ceasefire negotiations were in progress. Typically innovative and intrepid, Colvin got herself smuggled into the LTTE territory with the assistance of LTTE networks in contravention of GSL rules (Jeyaraj 2012). The prize was a reporter’s coup: an interview with the Tiger political chief Thamil Chelvam.[12]

She paid a heavy price for this boldness. She had apparently “walked 30 miles through jungle with her Tamil guides to evade government troops” on the way in (her tale to Greenslade 2012), so it must have been in the course of another hike back with a Tiger escort that they ran into a Sri Lanka Army patrol in the jungle north of Vavuniya. A skirmish seems to have ensued. It was in this engagement that she was badly injured by grenade shrapnel and lost her left eye.

The empirical details relating to this incident constitute a test for journalistic rigour and honesty because one is faced with conflicting accounts. In his valedictory memoriam DBS Jeyaraj has this description of the incident: “When she accompanied a group of people entering through the checkpoint at Parayanaalankulam on the Vavuniya-Mannar road there was an unexpected skirmish in which a grenade was flung at her. She was injured and lost blood. Her eyesight was impaired.” (2012).

The tale from Colvin and those close to her is a mite different…. Well, Rather more than a mite. She told a reporter friend Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 News that when her little band was spotted by the Army soldiers she called out “journalist, journalist!” This act, in her view, did not restrain her attacker: he “knew what he was doing“(Wikipedia). In short they wanted to get her. Her mother Rosemary Colvin provides a variant of the same tale: “She held up her press credentials, [but] they lobbed a grenade at her. She was arrested and tied up for 10 hours without medical care before the US State Department could get her out.”[13] Since the incident occurred during a ceasefire period declared (unilaterally) by the government on the 10th April, the Tiger internet agency TamilNet accused the Army of truce violation and said that it was “an act of cowardice by nervous trigger-happy soldiers” (TamilNet 2001).

What Marie Colvin (and TamilNet too) has kept hidden from her associates is a startling set of facts pertaining to this incident at Primandalkulam on 16th April. The Tiger squad was spotted by an SL Army listening post [presumably as it was seen crossing the frontlines]. A skirmish seems to have ensued and five Tigers, including an Intelligence officer, were apprehended. In the stilted style so typical of officialdom, the Ministry of Defence account says: “during a subsequent search of the area troops found a female (a foreigner) with injuries. The injured foreigner was initially evacuated to the field hospital Vavuniya and then to the Anuradhapura Base Hospital on the advice of doctors. She had sustained grenade shrapnel injuries above her left eye, left and right shoulders and right side of the chest. She was subsequently identified as a foreign journalist. According to a note made in her notebook she had met with Thamil Chelvam on 8 April 2001. The injured journalist was evacuated by air to COLOMBO at 0630 hrs on 17 April 2001.”[14]

It is typical of the enterprise of DBS Jeyaraj that he has secured a photograph of Marie Colvin being attended to by medical personnel at a field hospital in Vavuniya on the 17th April. This picture seems to contradict Rosemary Colvin’s accusation that she did not receive early medical treatment. Be that as it may, powerful forces intervened thereafter: no charges were leveled against her and she was evacuated to the West through the good offices of the British and/or US embassies.

The different accounts pose a problem for those seeking empirical veracity. Therefore they have a bearing on the focus of this essay. At this point, however, it is the consequences arising from this set of events, including Marie Colvin’s selective recollections, that is pertinent for our review.

For one: she overcame the traumatic process of medical recovery and the loss of eyesight in one eye. Ever stoic and strong, she returned to her journalist role at the Sunday Times in London. For another, she immediately became a heroine in the reckoning of ardent Sri Lankan Tamil nationalists. One K. Thiru Kumaran, a Tamil living in the locality of the Colvin family in north-eastern USA, even sent a note to a local newspaper which lauded her work on behalf of “the suffering Tamils,” accused the Sri Lankan government of wounding her deliberately and prayed for her speedy recovery.[15] Many Tamils, whether Saivite, Vaishnavite or Christian, are well-known for their religious devotion, so this message was undoubtedly from the depths of his heart.

Thirdly, such adulation and the fame arising from her interview with Thamil Chelvam enables one to surmise that, from that point in April 2001 (if not earlier), she developed a strong rapport with the LTTE and its supporters over the following years.

Once Colvin recovered and returned to work at the Sunday Times in London, it follows that her interaction with the Tamil Tiger network would have been enhanced. The question we must address is this: had she risen beyond the position of “sympathetic fellow-traveller” of the LTTE to that of “accomplice”? Was she devoted to the cause of “report[ing] what is happening” and adhering to the journalists’ “mission to speak the truth to power” (her own words — in Colvin 2010)? Or was her truthfulness compromised by ideological bonding and mateship? And could she adhere to these high principles of empirical veracity when she reported on battlefront events from a desk in London?[16]

This is a critical issue because of the weight she brought to the causes she addressed in her reportage. By 2008/09, she had been with the Times group for some 19 years and would have carried clout in editorial circles. What is more, she had an eye-patch, that mark of bravery and resoluteness in cause. She would have been a formidable presence in any face-to-face debate or roundtable review. Thus, the news items she presented on the war in Sri Lanka during the course of 2008 and 2009 would have carried considerable persuasive power for British and other readers attending to the events.

Our evaluation of her reports can be guided by the yardsticks she herself postulated during a poignant and prestigious moment that commemorated journalists who died on conflict and war duty, namely, a service at St Brides’ Church in London which drew an audience that included news editors and Camilla Duchess of Cornwall. Colvin’s sermon included the following proclamation:

Despite all the videos you see from the Ministry of Defence or the Pentagon, and all the sanitised language describing smart bombs and pinpoint strikes, the scene on the ground has remained remarkably the same for hundreds of years. Craters. Burned houses. Mutilated bodies. Women weeping for children and husbands. Men for their wives, mothers children. Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice…..

Many of you here must have asked yourselves, or be asking yourselves now, is it worth the cost in lives, heartbreak, loss? Can we really make a difference?

I faced that question when I was injured. In fact one paper ran a headline saying, has Marie Colvin gone too far this time? My answer then, and now, was that it is worth it.

…. We go to remote war zones to report what is happening. The public have a right to know what our government, and our armed forces, are doing in our name. Our mission is to speak the truth to power. We send home that first rough draft of history. We can and do make a difference in exposing the horrors of war and especially the atrocities that befall civilians.

Hers, then, was a critical voice, one prepared to question the work of her own US armed forces and those of Britain. Having met her and been impressed by her ebullience, directness and humour, DBS Jeyaraj summed up her approach in a nutshell: “she was a frontline warrior for truth journalism” (2012). It is this yardstick that must also guide our assessments of her reportage.

A fuller study must embrace a substantial span of time and encompass The Times of London group as a whole.[17] For the moment however let me concentrate on one of her reports dated 22 March as a litmus test because there was an observer at the rear battle front embedded with the SL Army’s 53rd Division under General Kamal Gunaratna at precisely this moment in the shifting struggle, namely, from the 17-to-19th March.[18] This was Sinharaja Tammita-Delgoda whose several reports on the war are marked by precise language and a manifest capacity to marshal empirical detail productively.[19] As with any reportage, of course, his purview will be partial to one locality and thus a “fragment” only. But Tammita-Delgoda was at the rear battle front and not in Colombo or London.

Marie Colvin’s Report of 22 March 2009 entitled “Artillery pounds wounded Tamils trapped on beach”

The power-packed headline is supported by striking punch lines at the start: “A THOUSAND amputees were among the wounded and dying waiting to be rescued from a beach in northeast Sri Lanka yesterday, according to aid agencies. Frightened Tamil families … were hiding in makeshift trenches as they came under artillery fire while waiting to be evacuated from Puthumathalan beach” (Colvin 2009).[20] This promising beginning is followed by bits and pieces of information thrown together in a jumble, with some ‘facts’ referring to a named Red Cross source (female) and an unnamed MSF doctor. It ends with a statement from Joan Ryan, a British MP who threatens to have Sri Lanka evicted from the Commonwealth. As significantly, the jumble includes an excerpt from her interview with Balasingham Nadesan of the LTTE who complained of non-stop artillery attacks and requested a ceasefire as well as international monitors, while stressing LTTE’s willingness to abide by a referendum among the Tamil people. Nowhere is it indicated that Colvin was in London. Some readers may have conceivably thought that she was located in Sri Lanka.

Citing “aid agencies,” Colvin’s report includes the following assertion: “More than 300 civilians were being killed every week in artillery or air attacks, or were dying for lack of medical care, food or water.”  It adds: the “Tamils are desperate because the last hospital in the area was forced to close after twice being bombed by the Sri Lankan army.” While the hospital is not named, discerning people would have been aware that the only fully-fledged hospital[21] that existed in the battle theatre within the Vanni Pocket at that stage was at Puthukkudiyirruppu (PTK).

After the LTTE was forced to abandon Kilinochhchi on 31 December 2008 and then lost control of Mullaitivu in early February, PTK was the only town in Tiger hands. It was one of their bastions, while town and locality also contained a satellite centre, a suicide bomb factory and bunkers associated with some commanders (e.g. Soosai). The LTTE, therefore, had fought hard to retain this locality in February and early March.

Our assessment of the Colvin news item of 22nd March and the degree of her adherence to “truth journalism” requires a degree of hard realism through attention to (1) the geographical context of the battle theatre and (2) the considerable military strength and determined resistance revealed by the LTTE during those early months of 2009.

We can lean on Serge de Silva-Ranasinghe’s detailed exposition of the war in several essays presented in Australian military journals in January to May 2009. Located in Perth he accessed GSL military sources and sifted meticulously through Sri Lankan newspapers and other online sources to build a substantive picture of the cut and thrust of battle in ways that the many reporters in Colombo seem to have been incapable of. Let me quote separate chunks from one of his essays in March 2009 at length so as to provide you with some comprehension of the context.

The months of February and March have witnessed continuous heavy fighting almost day and night, where the LTTE has marshalled all its resources … Commencing from February1-4, the LTTE launched major counterattacks against Task Force 4 and the 59th Division, which lay siege to the outer southern approaches of the LTTE frontline. The ambitious LTTE counterattack had the objective of recapturing Mullaitivu town in time for Sri Lanka’s Independence Day, on February 4, and forced the SLA to retreat as far south as Oddusudan, some 10 kilometres away. Initially, the LTTE achieved almost total surprise by infiltrating among groups of fleeing civilians crossing the frontline and also using the Nandikadal Lagoon near PTK and Mullaitivu town. In the initial attack the LTTE used several Vehicle-borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIEDs) to breach SLA defences followed by frontal counterattacks with over 500 guerrillas using a captured T-55 Main Battle Tank and a T-85 Armoured Personnel Carrier (later knocked out by infantry). The LTTE made immediate territorial gains forcing Task Force 4 and the 59th Division to hastily fall back on their flanks between 1.5-3 kilometres. It took four days of heavy fighting to reduce the LTTE salient with reserves from the Air Mobile…..

Ominously, while diversionary thrusts were launched against the 55th Division,a simultaneous and larger counterattack was launched against the neighbouring 58th Division where groups of guerrillas infiltrated and succeeded in pushing back its forward elements up to 1.5 kilometres. The fighting was heavy as exemplified by the 20th Gemunu Watch which destroyed two VBIEDs and fought off three local LTTE counterattacks. However, large groups of LTTE infiltrators were engaged in pitched skirmish actions with rear echelon troops…. Strategic reserves consisting of four squadrons of elite Special Forces and the 2nd Commando Regiment were immediately thrown into battle which saw heavy fighting last for over 48 hours before the 58th Division stabilized its front.

For the first time since the capture of Jaffna Peninsula in Operation Riviresa (c.1995), the SLA has engaged in the only instance of major urban combat in Eelam War 4. Sometime back Task Force 4, which is now in reserve, laid siege to the southern approaches of PTK, but due to insufficient strength and firepower was unable to breakthrough LTTE lines. Hence, the arrival of supporting formations such as the 53rd and 58th Divisions, west and north-west …Two captured T-55 Main Battle Tanks were also employed in the defence of the town. Not surprisingly much of the fighting was characterized by ferocious house to house combat. Practically every metre of ground was heavily contested which took the SLA weeks of heavy fighting to advance just over five kilometres to capture the town centre. While urban combat at PTK is drawing to a close, the LTTE have substantially escalated infiltration operations to conduct guerrilla warfare in rear echelon areas, which have caused serious operational problems. (“The Battle for the Vanni Pocket,” Asia-Pacific Defence Reporter, March 2009, 35: 18).

Besides these LTTE capacities their use of civilianns as sandbags posed a serious problem for the GSL forces. The LTTE was adamantine on this dimension: “We are fighting for the people [so] the people must stay with us,” they told the Human Rights Watch in 2008.[22] Thus, in noting the difficulties of traversing an area of scrub jungle interlaced with waterways such as the terrain surrounding the strategic LTTE base at Mullativu adjacent to the coast, in his essay in January 2009 de Silva-Ranasinghe noted that the “presence of large concentrations of civilians in [this] environment is likely to hinder operations by limiting use of air and artillery support” (“Battle of Kilinochchi,” 2009a: 8). This is what transpired. In the face of this dilemma the “last stages of the battle for Mullativu base [became] largely an infantry focused offensive, with sniper teams and special forces to enhance precision” (“(“Battle for Mullaitivu,” 2009b: 11-12).

De Silva-Ranasinghe’s sources are mostly from the government side. To anyone familiar with the LTTE’s organisational capacities and their fighting elements’ commitment to their cause such details ring true. Moreover, in his March 2009 article he notes that the “SLA casualties in recent weeks [have been] averaging 15-30 fatalities per day;”[23] while a recent communication stresses that “the SLA had well over 2000 casualties in the final five months of the war, January to May [including] about 500 killed in action in the last four weeks of the war. These are very heavy losses.”[24] These estimates are in line with other calculations that indicate that the SL forces lost 6261 personnel during Eelam War IV — with a significant proportion of these probably occurring in 2009 (Roberts, “Estimates,” 2013d).

De Silva-Ranasinghe’s several essays in early 2009 indicate how the standard format of media reportage guided by word restrictions that dictate short items of 500, or 700 or at most 1200 words, simply fail to do justice to complex topics. They also reveal how pathetic the Associated Press team of reporters[25] in Colombo led by Ravi Nessman were. Addressing the American public on the Tavis Smiley Show on 18th February 2009, Nessman lamented that “we” did not know if the LTTE still retained a conventional military capacity (Nessman 2009a & 2009b).

Such details also demonstrate how easy it would have been for the British public to have got a picture of the war that was both skimpy and distorted from the type of reports purveyed by Colvin as well as the journalists of the Guardian (for the latter, see Waidyatilake 2012). Few readers would have known that PTK was not on the coast and not embraced by the coastal strip of some 12 by 2.5 km adjacent to the Nandikadal Lagoon which had become the location where virtually the whole mass of people had been herded by persuasion and pressure. As noted by Citizen Silva in what is the most meticulous an extensive survey to date, “by the end of February 2009 virtually the whole body of some 298,000 people were encamped on what became known as the “second NoFireZone”, some 14 square kilometres of space on the coast between Nanthikadal lagoon and the sea” (IDAG 2010: Section 8, point 5). For the LTTE this body of people was not only a pool of labour and conscripts. The Tamil people were also hostages and sandbags constituting a defensive formation at the same time that they served as a spectre of “impending humanitarian disaster” which could potentially activate world power interventions that would enforce a ceasefire (see fn. 1).

Significantly, in early February 2009 both the US ambassador Robert Blake and UN personnel had combined to press the GSL leaders to carve out a No Fire Zone on the coast.[26] This may well have been a seed planted in their minds by Tiger emissaries abroad; but that is something we will never get to the bottom of. GSL reluctantly complied and the Second NFZ was delimited on 12th February 2009. This was a strategic coup for the LTTE: a mass of some 300,000 people parked on the coastal strip east of the Nandikadal Lagoon would serve as a defensive barrier to any amphibious operation from naval and army forces and, at the same time, provide a potential escape hatch for the Tiger directorate if some rescue operation could be engineered by KP from his location abroad.[27]

Using DBS Jeyaraj’s findings, Citizen Silva indicates that much earlier, in December 2008, “the LTTE [had] deliberately forced a body of some 10,000–20,000 civilians into the coastal stretch extending between Ambalavanpokkanai in the north to Vattavaakallu in the South in order to block the north-south advance of the 55th Brigade and 59th Brigade” (IDAG, Section 8, point 4). This was one section of the area encompassed by the second NFZ. Our focus, now, is one the situation in mid-March 2009 when Marie Colvin penned the article that moved Tammita-Delgoda to raise questions. Be that as it may, the pictures presented by TamilNet in mid-March 2009 reveal a congealed mass of people and vehicles along the untarred road running north-south in this arena,[28] the “Last Redoubt” in my terminology.

This area was the site for most of the evidence marshalled by Marie Colvin in her news report of 22nd March, partly aided by reports from Red Cross or ICRC personnel who had visited the arena in connection with humanitarian medivac operations in association with the SL Navy.[29] Thus, readers in Britain who attended to Colvin’s item of news on 22 March 2009, one supposedly guided by “truth-journalism,” would have been quite justified in thinking that the “last hospital” that had been abandoned because of heavy bombardment was located on the coast.

It was not. It was in PTK town, which is 4.9 km west of the Nandikadal Lagoon and approximately 8-to-9 km from the coast. The hospital buildings, mostly intact albeit damaged, fell to the SL Army on the 12th March.  So what you get from Colvin’s news report is a misleading ‘fact’ concocted by a combination of deception, silence and ignorance (for Colvin herself may not have known where PTK was).

The deception of the public was largely the product of her own gullibility and willingness to accept every statement from Tiger friends — in England and in Sri Lanka — as definitive fact. Unfortunately for her reputation — now — Tammita-Delgoda was at the rear battle front embedded (much like Colvin, Kate Adie and other journalists in other battle theatres) with the 58th Division and saw the PTK and its hospital with his own eyes. He also took photographs.

These (and those displayed within the Ministry of Defence web site) support his own surprise at the number of buildings in the PTK locale that remained intact or only partially damaged.[30] Since he was on the scene and no less devoted to empirical fact than Colvin,[31] his facts trump the “facts” that had been conveyed by Marie Colvin because she accepted whatever Tamil functionaries (including NGO personnel) or those aligned with the LTTE told her.…and did so because she was so devoted to their cause that she had become their mouthpiece.

It is abundantly clear that on 22nd March 2009 Marie Colvin’s “mission to speak the truth to power” was shattered in the breech. One suspects, too, that this shattering impact may apply more generally to all her reports on Sri Lanka in the last phase of the war and extend to much of the Times reportage from the likes of Rhys Blakely and Jeremy Page in 2009 as well as subsequently.[32] That, however, is speculation, an explicit surmise that needs testing through detailed empirical work on the Times coverage of the Sri Lankan scene.

Epilogue

Subsequently, after her untimely death in 2012, a news account indicates that her funeral at St Dominic Church in New York was featured by a poignant expression of Sri Lanka Tamil fraternity and ideological kinship: “Outside the church, a group of Tamil people, an ethnic minority of Sri Lanka, stood vigil. Some carried posters with Ms. Colvin’s picture — featuring a black eye patch over her left eye, worn since she was injured by a grenade in Sri Lanka in 2001 — and the slogan: “Uncrowned queen of intrepid journalists.”  “We lost our friend,” said Pat Pathmakumar, a member of the group, adding: “I never met her, I never talked to her. But when I heard she died, I cried.”

I too wish that Marie Colvin had not met such an untimely death. It is not politic to attack a dead person, especially an esteemed and famous dead person. Besides, I would have dearly loved to witness her response to a venture such as mine, one which seeks to hoist Colvin on her own petard.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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[1] See IDAG 2013: conclusion; Roberts, “Generating Calamity,” 2014b and Roberts, TPS. Essays, 2014: 184-203 & 292-99 and TPS. Pictorial, 2014: 219-23.

[2] The US Ambassador, Robert Blake, recognised at one point that the LTTE “refused to allow civilians to leave because the LTTE needs the civilians as human shields, as a pool for forced conscription, and as a means to try to persuade the international community to force a cease-fire upon the government, since that is the LTTE’s only hop” (Secret dispatch 133 of 5th Feb. 2009). However, this did not prevent him and USA continuously pressing for a ceasefire as one step in negotiations towards a “political settlement” (his words). Also see Gamage 2014.

[3] “The final months of the war saw the Tamil Tiger leadership cynically control the movement of the civilian population, exposing them to the horrors of battle in the hope that the appalling images of suffering would prompt the world to intervene” (Still Counting the Dead, 2012: 8). Since Colvin and Harrison may have been in touch with each other in London in 2009 one wonders why Marie Colvin did not gain this insight.

[4] As I have stressed repeatedly in Roberts, “Blackmail” (2012) and “Generating Calamity”(2014b) among other essays.

[5] See Roberts, “Visual Imagery,” 2014b: 11-13 and Hoole 2001: 403-74.

[6] Harun Khan was one of the senior UNHCR personnel who entered LTTE space with the supplies taken by Convoy 11 and remained there in late January and early February. He seems to be the principal source for the information on the shelling of the Hub area of the First NFZ in late January (detailed in Weiss, 2010: chap. 5 and utilized by the Darusman Panel as well); This shelling was attributed to the SL Army but since much of it occurred in the dark hours of early morning some doubts linger on the source of the shells. Re Dalziel’s three week sojourn in LTTE territory, see US Embassy despatch of 17th March 2009 in Wikileaks trove.

[7] See Nessman 2009a and 2009b.

[8] “Vanni Pocket” is the concept both Serge de Silva-Ranasinghe (e.g. 2009d) and I utilise to describe the circumscribed north-eastern corner of the Vanni into which Thamiīilam was reduced by November 2008. At this early point the LTTEs til controlled the arterial road between Mankulam and Elephant Pass; but once they lost control of Paranthan in December they had to evacuate Kilinochchi and the Vanni Pocket was reduced still further. See the Maps in Figs. 77 & 78 in Roberts Tamil Person and State. Pictorial, 2014: 121-22..

[9] “I had known Nadesan and Seevaratnam Puleedevan, the head of the Tigers’ peace secretariat, since being smuggled into rebel territory eight years ago” says Colvin in 2009a.

[10] Vijay Nambiar was the Special Envoy for UN Sec-General Ban Ki-Moon and left for Sri Lanka from Amman circa 17th May. He was contacted by KP (the LTTE’s international front-man) as well as Colvin re surrender possibilities.

[11] There are many analyses that document the fascist character of both Pirapāharan and the LTTE. For instance see Roberts, “Hitler,” 2010a and “Inspirations,” 2012b.

[12] “She filed reports for her paper while in the Wanni. This included the Thamilselvan interview” (Jeyaraj 2012).

[13] Other reports from Colvin and those aligned with her refer to an RPG. This little discrepancy is not that little: the RPG has a much greater range than a throw. This reminds one of the adage: “from little acorns oaks grow.” Here, an oak seems to have become an acorn in order to inflict greater accusation.

[14] I deployed several channels to extract a transcript of this document from a Ministry of Defence source, being aided by contacts that developed after I delivered a talk at ICES, Colombo in 2012 on the massive tasks negotiated by a combination of government, UN, INGO and NGO agencies at Manik Farm.

[15] “An email from K. Thiru Kumaran was sent to the Enterprise Pilot. He said, “I am writing, to highlight a proud, courageous and triumphant moment for the freedom of press brought to the world today by none other than an Oyster Bay resident. A tragic event that occurred thousands of miles away from Oyster Bay is touching the hearts of many Tamils just like myself. Marie Colvin of Oyster Bay was wounded deliberately by the armed forces of Sri Lanka. As a journalist with Britain’s Sunday London Times she traveled to the North of the island nation to cover the sufferings of the Tamil people living under a brutal embargo of the Government of Sri Lanka. Many Tamils around the world are praying for the speedy recovery of Marie Colvin” (Karppi 2012).

[16] This is aggravated by the possibility that many readers of the Times may not have been aware that she was located in London when reporting on the Sri Lankan war in 2008/09.

[17] Thus we need the type of work commenced by Waidyatilake (“Killers on Paper,” 2012) for the Daily News (Lanka) and the Guardian (Britain).

[18] Email Note from Tammita-Delgoda to Roberts, 2014. He was subsequently embedded with the 55th Division as it advanced south towards Chalai from 29-31st March and his experiences then were presented in a riveting article that was initially presented to the Indian Defence Academy (Tammita-Delgoda 2009).

[19] Tammita-Delgoda 2009, 2011a and 2014b.

[20] In the Transcurrents reprint of the Sunday Times article, a striking picture of a shell blast on sandy terrain by a stretch of water is placed strategically at this point.

[21] As distinct from several makeshift hospitals which the official functionaries and LTTE set up in schools or houses at various points in the coastal strip defined as the second NFZ or what I term the “Last Redoubt.”

[22] Quoted in de Silva-Ranasinghe, “Mullaitivu,” 2009b: 11.

[23] De Silva-Ranasinghe, “Vanni Pocket,” 2009d: 17.

[24] De Silva-Ranasinghe to Roberts, email 3 November 2014.

[25] This cluster included Krishan Francis and Bharatha Mallawarachi..

[26] “… we must persuade the government to create a new no-fire zone, perhaps along the coast, where fighting has been less intense. UN Representative Buhne commented that he had already raised the possibility of a new no-fire zone along the coast, without success,” said Ambassador Blake in “secret dispatch” No. 133 of 5 Feb. 2009. Note that the government of Sri Lanka did in fact accept this idea and carve out a NFZ along the coast on 12th Feb. 2012.

[27] On this strategy, see Roberts, “TPS. Pictorial,” 2014: 219-23. Roberts, “KP’s Frantic Efforts,” 2014 and Jeyaraj 2011: 23-31.

[28] See Roberts, “Congestion,” 2013e and TPS. Pictorial, Figs. 91 and 92.

[29] Citizen Silva has sent me figures that reveal that the ICRC and SL Navy organized 31 medivac voyages between 9th February and 9th May and that a total of 13,794 people were evacuated. From the 23 voyages for which a breakdown of these evacuees is available 3136 were injured adults, 3471 were children and the rest were “accompanying caregivers” — so that the latter made up 37.4 per cent of that partial total. See Roberts, TPS. Pictorial, 2014: Figs. 95-98.

[30] “[I]f there was indeed whole scale bombing and artillery fire of the type that has been reported, then all I would have found is ruins and rubble. As I have already pointed out, a large number of buildings still appear to be standing, even though they have been the focus of fierce fighting. This appears to suggest a relatively restrained and selective use of heavy artillery” (Tammita-Delgoda 2014).

[31] For instance, note this statement: “As I have not been to the beach side, where these reports emanate from, I can neither confirm nor deny them. Apart from the ICRC, no one else has access to the seaside,” (2014a).

[32] The allegation peddled by Page and Blakely in the Times in early July 2009 that asserted that 1400 inmates were dying each week at the detention centres in Manik Farm spread like wildfire across the international news circuits and was also emphasized on Tamil web sites such as TamilNet and Tamil Sangam. This figure was pure concoction. Significantly, there was not one news item that reiterated and elaborated upon this tale — an indication that it was a case of outsize muckraking from Sri Lankan sources that was gleefully taken up by The Times. Much later in , Professor Sudharshan Seneviratne (2010) birched Page for his article of 6th April 2010 because it (a) misrepresented a discussion with him and (b) perpetuated a story of archaeology as a weapon of Sinhalese majoritarian colonization through highly selective reportage.

Categories
Foreign Affairs

Sri Lanka Criticised For Absent In Action On Nuclear Weapons At UN

The Friday Forum has these days criticised the government of Sri Lanka for not supporting the call for the total elimination of nuclear weapons. &#8220Opposition to weapons of mass destruction in general, and nuclear weapons in certain, has been a nicely-known position in Sri Lanka’s foreign policy.&#8221 the Friday Forum said in a statement.

G.L. Peiris - Minister of External Affairs

G.L. Peiris &#8211 Minister of External Affairs

One hundred and fifty five governments, led by New Zealand, presented a joint statement at the United Nations First Committee on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons use. In 2013, in Very first Committee, a similar statement obtained the signatures of 125 governments. Both last year and this year, Sri Lanka refused to sign these statements.

We publish beneath the statement in dull

Absent in action: Sri Lanka on nuclear weapons

Sri Lanka&#8217s foreign policy has not too long ago been the target of much criticism and 1 can cite a litany of scandals and questionable departures from professionalism and our traditional Non-aligned stance.

These are now overshadowed by the glaring lack of principle and consistency recently observed in the Very first Committee of the present UN Basic Assembly sessions where Disarmament and Safety concerns are discussed and voted upon. 1 hundred and fifty five governments, led by New Zealand, presented a joint statement at the United Nations Initial Committee on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons use. In 2013, in Very first Committee, a equivalent statement obtained the signatures of 125 governments. Each final year and this year, Sri Lanka refused to sign these statements.

Opposition to weapons of mass destruction in basic, and nuclear weapons in certain, has been a properly-known position in Sri Lanka’s foreign policy. Previous Governments signed and ratified the Treaty for the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) the Outer Space Treaty banning the placement of nuclear weapons in outer space, and the Seabed Treaty banning the placement of nuclear weapons on the seabed and ocean floor. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) has been signed, but the present Government is inexplicably holding off on its ratification, which luckily does not affect the entry into force of the Treaty. Sri Lanka has held prominent positions in Disarmament Conferences, and is a member of the sole multilateral disarmament negotiating physique, the Geneva-primarily based Conference on Disarmament.

As a founder member of the Non-aligned Movement (NAM), Sri Lanka has supported the get in touch with for the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Certainly it was at the 1976 Fifth NAM Summit in Colombo that the historic Initial UN Unique Session Devoted to Disarmament was mooted exactly where the priority of nuclear disarmament was clearly established. Accordingly as lately as 2012 when the 16th NAM Summit was held in Tehran the 120 NAM nations agreed at para 151 of its Final Document: “The Heads of State or Government reaffirmed the Movement’s principled positions on nuclear disarmament, which remains its highest priority, and on the associated issue of nuclear non-proliferation in all its aspects. They stressed the significance that efforts aiming at nuclear non-proliferation should be parallel to simultaneous efforts aiming at nuclear disarmament. They stressed their concern at the threat to humanity posed by the continued existence of nuclear weapons and of their achievable use or threat of use.”

The joint statement now issued at the UN by the 155 countries led by New Zealand warns humankind but again that

&#8220It is in the interest of the quite survival of humanity that nuclear weapons are by no means utilized once more, under any circumstances. The catastrophic effects of a nuclear weapon detonation, whether or not by accident, miscalculation or design and style, cannot be adequately addressed”.

The contact to action tellingly concludes on the responsibility that lies on us as citizens:

&#8220By raising awareness about this concern, civil society has a essential part to play side-by-side with governments as we fulfil our responsibilities. We owe it to future generations to perform collectively to do just that, and in performing so to rid our planet of the threat posed by nuclear weapons.&#8221

Will Sri Lanka return to decency and NAM principles?

Jayantha Dhanapala                             Professor Savitri Goonesekere,              Suriya Wickremasinghe,

For and On Behalf of the Friday Forum

Mr. Jayantha Dhanapala, Professor Savitri Goonesekere, Ms. Suriya Wickremasinghe, DrG. Usvatte-aratchi,

Mr. J.C. Weliamuna, Mr. Tissa Jayatilaka, Professor Ranjini Obeyesekere, Mr. Faiz-ur.Rahman,

Professor Arjuna Aluwihare, Ms. Damaris Wickremesekera, Dr. Selvy Thiruchandran, Professor Camena Gunaratne,  Dr. Deepika Udagama, Rev. Dr. Jayasiri Peiris,  Ms. Manouri Muttetuwegama, Rt. Reverend Duleep de Chickera, Dr. A. C. Visvalingam, Professor Gananath Obeyesekere, Mr. Pulasthi Hewamanna, Mr. Danesh Casie Chetty, Mr. Ranjit Fernando, Mr. Dhammapala Wijayanandana, Mr. Saliya Pieris, Mr. Chandra Jayaratne