Saturday, 21 July 2012

State-sponsored Terrorism and Violence in Sri-Lanka

State-sponsored terrorism and violence is NOT new in Sri-Lanka. The country has a long history of violence perpetrated by the state. However, state-sponsored terrorism and violence have intensified under the Rajapakse regime in recent years.

Political Murders

Buddhism in Sri Lanka is not the peaceful one that is preached by people like the Dalai Lama. For example, SWRD Bandaranaike - a former Prime Minister – was murdered by a Buddhist monk in 1959.

Mapitigama Buddharakkitha, the chief priest of the Kelaniya Raja Maha Vihara, was the main conspirator of the assassination plot. Sri Lankan Government asked Scotland Yard to undertake extensive investigations of the incident. Investigations revealed that Buddharakkitha was the mastermind behind the assassination!

Hard line Buddhists monks have been preaching "This Island belongs to Sinhalese Buddhists only mentality" for years now. They are the “king makers" behind the scenes to the anti-Tamil Sinhalese Governments in Sri Lanka.

Sinhalese Politicians and hard-line Buddhist monks have fuelled Sinhalese chauvinism in Sri Lanka for many decades now.

Sri Lanka

is the only country to have a political party exclusively made up of monks with members of parliament.

This ideology is very similar to the one used by the Al-Qaeda and Islamic Extremists.

A report done by the USAID of Sri Lanka's standing on Democracy and Governance in 2001 concluded that the gradual unravelling of the Sri Lankan nation-state is due to the combined effects of protracted ethnic-based conflict and deteriorating democratic rights and institutions.

In an interview with Sir David Frost on 28 October 2001, the former Sri-Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga said that Sri Lanka had killing fields; there was a lot of terror perpetrated by the government itself, STATE TERROR.

Chandrika Kumaratunga’s husband, Vijaya Kumaranatunga, was murdered in Colombo in February 1988.

Killing and Harassment of Journalists and Human Rights Activists

A large number of journalists and human rights activists have been murdered and/or disappeared in the last five years.

One of the most prominent journalists was Lasantha Wickramatunga who was brutally murdered in broad daylight in Colombo in January 2009. In blaming the Sri Lankan government for abuses of human rights, he wrote:

No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism. In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last.

http://www.thesundayleader.lk/20090111/editorial-.htm

According to Human Rights Watch:

The government has failed to bring to justice those responsible for any of the killings or enforced disappearances of journalists in recent years. For example, the investigation into the January 2009 killing of Lasantha Wickremetunga, the outspoken editor of the Sunday Leader newspaper, has produced no arrests.

There has also been no progress in the January 2010 “disappearance” of the journalist and cartoonist Prageeth Eknalogoda of Lanka eNews. In November 2011 Mohan Peiris, a former attorney general, told the United Nations Committee against Torture in Geneva that Eknalogoda was alive and living outside the country. But in June 2012, when called to testify before the magistrate’s court about Eknalogoda’s whereabouts, he said he did not know them and could not recall where he got the previous information.

The government’s campaign of harassment and intimidation of the media, plus the failure to investigate seriously abuses against journalists, has led to widespread self-censorship and caused many journalists to flee the country. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 23 journalists have been forced into exile since 2007 and only three have returned.

The Rajapakse regime has criminals and underworld figures within its government. For example, Mervyn Silva is a notorious gangster and also a government minister. In July 2009, Mervyn Silva held a meeting where he publicly stated: “Lasantha Wickrematunge from the Leader paper went overboard. I took care of him.”

Reporters Without Borders ranks Sri Lanka 163 out of 179 nations on its global Press Freedom Index 2011 - 2012. Sri-Lanka is ranked just above Somalia!

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth” Gautama Buddha

Useful links for more information:

http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/07/03/sri-lanka-halt-harassment-media

http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/06/19/sri-lanka-meaning-victory

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-18332987

http://groundviews.org/2012/04/23/bigoted-monks-and-militant-mobs-is-this-buddhism-in-sri-lanka-today/

http://en.rsf.org/video-interview-with-sunanda-05-10-2009,34648?var_mode=calcul

http://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/a-criminal-monk-to-the-police-commission/

http://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/video-evidence-violent-buddhist-monks-are-using-sudda-sinhala-filth/

http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17491832

Saturday, 14 July 2012

The Men Who Are Screwing an Entire Country

The Rajapakse brothers who are running Sri-Lanka have committed serious human rights violations in the country.

All leading international organisations list the country as one of the WORST VIOLATORS of human rights in the world.

Here are some examples of how the Rajapakse regime operates and deceives the world.

1. In May 2009, following the brutal end of a long civil war, the regime had promised the UN Secretary General that allegations of war crimes committed by Sri Lankan forces would be properly investigated.

The UN Human Rights Council said this year that a proper, independent investigation had yet to take place.

2. The Sri Lankan Daily Mirror quoted the President’s spokesman, Bandula Jayasekera as saying that David Cameron and Rajapakse had held a “CORDIAL” meeting and that the President had briefed the Prime Minister “on the development in the country”.

Mr Jayasekera told the Colombo Gazette that “Mr Cameron and Mr Rajapakse had held “one-to-one talks”. The paper said that “the details of that discussion were not immediately made available by the President’s office.”

Now it is clear why those details were not made available. It was simply a BLATANT LIE!

A spokesman for the British Prime Minister has denied media reports from Sri Lanka that David Cameron had had a “CORDIAL” meeting with Sri Lankan President during diamond jubilee celebrations in London last month.

“The Prime Minister raised the issue of making sure that allegations of WAR CRIMES in Sri Lanka were properly investigated,” said Craig Oliver, the Prime Minister’s spokesman.

They lie brazenly and the lies are not even credible!

3. Human rights violations remain routine in Sri Lanka almost three years after the end of the war, an Amnesty International report has said.

The group says that hundreds of people are detained without trial, often held incommunicado and frequently tortured.

According to Amnesty, Sri Lanka’s justice system has failed to check widespread violations of human rights, including ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES, KILLINGS AND TORTURE. Sri Lanka’s justice system is under-resourced and so inefficient that most human rights violations are NEVER INVESTIGATED, let alone heard in court. It is subject to political pressure and does not provide effective witness protection. State agents have eliminated witnesses through bribes, intimidation and violence. They have discouraged police investigations and misled the public.

4. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists:

“Mahinda Rajapakse has presided over a dark era of targeted media killings and complete law enforcement failure in addressing the crimes. All nine journalist murders in the past decade have gone unsolved, leaving persistent questions as to whether authorities have been complicit in some of the crimes.”

5. Senior serving military officers and other well-placed professional and Sri Lankan government sources have testified to UK’s Channel 4 News that responsibility for the alleged crimes "goes right to the top" – pointing at the Rajapakse brothers. One of them, Mahinda, is president. Another, Gotabaya, is defence secretary, and a third, Basil, is a former presidential adviser and is currently a cabinet minister.

6. A report by The Elders - a group of leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela in 2007 to address major causes of human suffering - is sharply critical of the Sri Lankan government.

It says that the government's "clampdown on domestic critics and its disdain for human rights deserves a far tougher response".

"Meaningful progress on reconciliation in Sri Lanka is still desperately needed," it says.

It said there was a "DEAFENING GLOBAL SILENCE" to Sri Lanka's "worrying approach to human rights, good governance and accountability", which may encourage other states to act in a similar way.

The report said that the government's persecution of its critics was "terrifying".

7. Former Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga has condemned the current government, saying it has failed to win peace in the country after the war.

She alleged that members of ethnic minorities are leaving the country in response to its policies.

Giving a lecture in Colombo, she said her children had reacted with anguish to the Channel 4 TV documentary on alleged war-time atrocities.

She said both her adult children, who lived abroad, had telephoned her, one of them sobbing, when the British TV station Channel 4 broadcast a documentary purporting to show war crimes by both sides in the war.

After it her son said he was ashamed to call himself Sinhalese and Sri Lankan, she said.

8. In the book “Trauma of Terrorism” by Yael Danieli, the Sri Lankan state is viewed as having been the guiltiest in the use of TERROR. The author claims that STATE TERRORISM became institutionalized into the very structure of society and mechanism of governance.

9. Sri Lanka must co-operate with any international investigation into alleged war crimes, ex-army chief Sarath Fonseka has told the BBC, a day after his release from jail.

He said some Sri Lankan leaders were "hiding their faces" over the conduct of the war, as if they were guilty.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”. Edmund Burke