Devanagala - Latest in the racist agenda to provoke Muslims

By Latheef Farook

Devanagala is a beautiful peaceful village in the central hills about six kilometers from Mawanella on the way to Hemmathagama. The village has been known for the rock called Devanagala Rock. There is a Buddhist temple and an inscription on the rock. According to those in the village Devanagala area was believed to have been the place from where Sinhalese kings dispatched garrisons to different places. Muslims in the village claim that they were settled there by Sinhalese kings to defend the Kandyan kingdom from invaders.

Sri Lanka: Wigneswaran fears new LTTE organised by the Govt

Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran claims there is an attempt to form an new LTTE which will operate with the backing of the Government.
Speaking at the Sarvodaya Annual General Meeting on Saturday, Wigneswaran also said there are fears for his safety and security and that he may face the same fate as some Tamil politicians in the past.

Sri lanka: Revisions to HRCSL Act submitted to President

Niranjala Ariyawansha
Chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL), Dr. Prathiba Mahanamahewa, said revisions to the existing Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka Act, which contains five recommendations, had been submitted to the President as well as the Minister of Justice for their perusal, two weeks ago.

Rajapaksa calls for home-grown solution for Tamils issue

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has invited main Tamil party leaders, including Chief Minister of the northern province C V Wigneswaran, to join hands with him for national reconciliation rather than looking for a solution from a “foreign nation”.
“I invite Mr (R) Sampanthan (TNA leader) and northern chief minister Mr Wigneswaran to join hands for the sake of peace and national reconciliation,” Mr. Rajapaksa said in the Parliament during a debate on the 2014 budget yesterday.

UNP adopts four resolutions; No mention of the ethnic conflict

The main opposition United National Party (UNP) adopted four resolutions at the party convention held at the UNP headquarters in Sirikotha today.
UNP General Secretary Tissa Attanayake proposed the resolutions and party leader Ranil Wickremesinghe then called for a show of hands to have them approved.

The chief architect of the Galle Literary Festival Geoffrey Dobbs refused entry to Sri Lanka

Geoffrey Dobbs

The chief architect of the annual Galle Literary Festival, British born Australian Geoffrey Dobbs has been denied entry into Sri Lanka, opposition UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe told Parliament today.
He said that refusing entry to someone in the caliber of Dobbs, who had opened some hotels down south and is also mentioned in leading travel magazines, could hurt Sri Lanka’s tourism industry.

Sri Lanka: 3 Mosques to be closed - Muslim MPs demand urgent action

Muslim Members of Parliament (MP) met Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne, who is also the Minister of Buddhasasana and Religious Affairs, this afternoon and raised concerns over attempts to close three Mosques in the Dehiwala area.

First UN Resolution on the Protection of Women Human Rights Defenders

A Pakistan HRD 

We are pleased to inform you that the first UN resolution on the protection of women human rights defenders was adopted by consensus by the UN General Assembly's Third Committee on 27 November 2013. More than fifty States co-sponsored this important resolution.

The resolution, inter alia:

-      expresses concern about systemic and structural discrimination and violence faced by women human rights defenders of all ages, and calls upon States to take all measures necessary to ensure their protection and to integrate a gender perspective into their efforts to create a safe and enabling environment for the defence of human rights;

Sri Lanka : It is too soon to define what any international investigation might consist of The UK Minister of State Hugo Swire

Hugo Swire

House of Commons – Questions on Sri Lanka, 17 Dec 2013: 
Kerry McCarthy: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what progress he expects the Sri Lankan government to make on an independent investigation into war crimes and human rights abuses before the UK decides not to pursue a resolution on an international inquiry at the UN Human Rights Council in Mar 2014.

Sri Lanka: Deputy Minister ( retired Navy admiral) calls for ban on TNA

Labour and Labour Relations Deputy Minister Sarath Weerasekera told Parliament yesterday that the government should ban the TNA, which was propagating the LTTE ideology of separatism even after the defeat of the terrorist organisation.

Sri Lanka: Statement Condemning the Arrest and Unlawful Detention of Seven Tamil Youth, and Calling for their Immediate Release

19th December, 2013
We the undersigned, strongly condemn the arbitrary arrest and illegal detention of Raveendran Kajeepan (21), Alfred Piratheepan (30), Murukaiya Ashokkumar (35) and Nageswarasri Yarsan (22) from Jaffna, and the arrest and continued detention of three other youth* from Mannar, by the Terrorism Investigation Department (TID) between the 25th and 27th of November, 2013. It has become common practice for the Government to arrest and detain Tamil youth under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) coinciding with the time of Mahaveerar Naal (LTTE Heroes Day). In November 2012 too, four Tamil students from the University of Jaffna were arrested and detained under the PTA, and released intermittently over the course of 3 months.

Villages gone, buildings razed to ground in SL military appropriated Valikamaam North

 

[TamilNet]
Almost all the buildings that were situated in the 6,400 acres of lands seized by the occupying Sri Lankan military in Valikaamam North in Jaffna have been completely bulldozed by the SL military, according to those who have witnessed the destruction in recent days. The entire area of fertile cultivation and residential lands now looks like single piece of desert land, they said. Except the buildings used by the genocidal military at the ‘forward line’ and the building at the rear, close to the Palaali military base, everything else has been razed to the ground.

Incredible but true! Mohan Pieris as lawyer, prosecutor, accused, Attorney General and Chief Justice related to a same case

Mohan Peris

 Lalith Kotalawala, a frontline businessman had been subjected to a miscarriage of justice whereby the prosecutor who filed the action against him had himself heard the case . This most depraved and deplorable judicial hearing involved the Attorney General (AG) Mohan Peiris who filed the charges then against Kotalawala, hearing the case now against Kotalawala the accused. When the case was heard on 18 Dec 2013 Peiris the former AG and present chief justice sat as the judge in this case.

India and Sri Lanka: A sea of conflict

Meera Srinivasan

Tamil Nadu fishermen entering Sri Lankan waters interfere with the livelihood of Sri Lankan Tamils struggling to make a living from the sea after a brutal war

The haunting image — from a reporting assignment over a month ago — of an army of Indian trawlers charging towards the shore of Analativu, a small island in the northern tip of Sri Lanka, remains vivid in my memory. 

Though there were no arrests reported that night, the Sri Lankan Navy, on several occasions before and after that, have arrested Indian fishermen on charges of trespassing. Not just in Analativu, but at different points off Sri Lanka’s northern and eastern coasts. 

Sri Lanka mulls Mandela’s reconciliation model

(AFP) – Sri Lanka is considering a South African-style reconciliation commission nearly five years after crushing Tamil separatists in an offensive that triggered international allegations of war crimes, a minister said on Tuesday.

Information minister Keheliya Rambukwella said President Mahinda Rajapakse, who attended a memorial service for former South African president Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg last week, was trying to replicate the late civil rights icon’s reconciliation bid.

A letter to President Rajapakse from Nelson Mandela

Sunanda Deshapriya

Dear Mahinda Rajapakse,

At the outset , I would like to tell you one thing. I regret very much that we have never met and not had the opportunity to share our experience.  Perhaps you could not visit me before I became bedridden because you were bogged down with a difficult war.

Violent prevention of public protest violates government's commitment to basic rights

National Peace Council
On International Human Rights Day, December 10, a public protest by families of missing persons in Trincomalee was attacked by goons while the large contingent of police present at the scene remained inactive.   They carried photographs and posters about their missing loved ones and demanded that the government should take steps to provide information about their whereabouts.    Civil Society and democratically elected representatives of the people also participated in the protest.  The goons attacked those participating in the protest and tore their posters, assaulted them, injured them and warned them that they should not carry out protests against the government.

LLRC and reconciliation process: GoSL report to UNHRC CCPR Sri Lanka session

8. LLRC and reconciliation process
70. His Excellency President Mahinda Rajapaksa appointed the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) in May 2010 in order to strengthen the national reconciliation process and ensure the dividends of peace to all Sri Lankans. 

800 Tamil families displaced in Sampur lands being acquired for company owned by Rajapaksa clan

Meera SrinivasanA white, rectangular board with Sinhala and Tamil letters appears once every few metres along the iron fence around a huge expanse of land in the sea-facing town.
‘Ilangai Minsara Sabaikkuriya Kaaniyaagum. Utpravesithal thadai’ [This land belongs to the Ceylon Electricity Board. Entry is banned] reads the board. This is where a 500-MW capacity, coal-fired power plant will come up in a few years from now in a joint project between Sri Lanka and India.

The Coming Confrontation

NORTHERN CM WIGNESWARAN ALLEGES GENOCIDE, CALLS FOR PLEBISCITE

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka

 Mr Akashi was absolutely right when he urged flexibility and reform on the Sri Lankan government and sounded the alarm of serious consequences in Geneva March 2014 (that’s 75 days away, folks) if it failed to shift in the right direction. He did get one thing wrong though. There is neither a “Central government” nor a “Northern provincial government” in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka launches diplomatic offensive ahead of UN rights meet

Sri Lanka: facing another resolution

PTI

COLOMBO: Faced with the prospect of a third UN human rights council resolution in as many years, Sri Lanka on Sunday launched a diplomatic offensive to counter international pressure over alleged rights abuses during the final phase of its civil war in 2009.

Brigadier Ruwan Wanigasooriya, the military spokesman, said some eight video documentaries produced by the army had been dispatched to Sri Lankan missions overseas and the UNHRC member states.

O! Justice, what crimes are committed in thy name - Editorial Daily Mirror

 Monday, 16 December 2013 
One of France’s kings was once asked about the rule of law. His infamous reply quoted for hundreds of years to define dictatorship, was “I am the state”. It is said that he was executed for his vulgar or extravagance arrogance and he was dumped in the garbage heaps of history.  Yet most world leaders, with the exception of the legendary statesman Nelson Mandela, seem to have learnt little or care less about the grim warnings from world history.

DMK to Centre: Move resolution against Sri Lanka in UNHRC

Besides urging the Indian government to move a resolution in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) seeking a credible international inquiry into killing of Sri Lankan Tamils, war crimes and human rights violations in the last leg of the civil war, the DMK's general council meeting on Sunday wanted India to facilitate a referendum among the island nation’s Tamils to find a permanent political solution.

Tamil Eelam is not far away: Yashwant Sinha, BJP

Yashwant Sinha

Siva Prasanna Kumar
Chennai: “Tamil Eelam is not far away”, declared BJP se­nior Yashwant Sinha at a well-attended party meeting held at a marriage hall in the city on Wednesday. Admitting that the BJP during its NDA rule had advocated political settlement for the Tamils within a united Lanka, the former foreign minister insisted that the position now was different.

Letter to Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka on the postponed Tortutre Commission

The following text was sent as a letter addressing the Chairman, Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka today. It was signed by Sudarshana Gunawardana of Rights Now Collective for Democracy on behalf of 16 civil society organisations.

This was faxed to the Human Rights Commission today (Friday 13.12.2013) and it will be sent to the HRC by registered post tomorrow.