Posts Categorized: Military

ITJP: Sri Lanka’s Militarisation of COVID-19 Response

by International Truth and Justice Project, South Africa, April 8, 2020 ITJPSL.COM ITJPSL /A_T/ GMAIL /D_O_T/ COM EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: YASMIN SOOKA English ITJP_COVID-19 press release (Merged) copy PRESS RELEASE: Sri Lanka’s Militarisation of COVID-19 Response Accompanying Infographic Johanesburg: The lack of civilian oversight over Sri Lanka’s militarised COVID-19 response raises some very serious human rights… Read more »

Militarised Troika Intervenes in Civil Affairs of North-East

by TamilNet, March 31, 2020 Occupying Colombo is introducing a military-controlled troika to each of the eight districts in the North and East to determine who is permitted to venture out during the lockdown, now imposed as a curfew to control the spread of COVID-19 pandemic, informed civil sources in Mannaar told TamilNet on Tuesday…. Read more »

Sri Lanka’s Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic

A military mindset by Thusiyan Nandakumar, The Polis Project, London, March 2020 This is part of a series of conversations interrogating militarization of medicine and public health and its adverse effects as various communities deal with COVID19. You can watch the video of this conversation with Dr Thusiyan Nandakumar on our Instagram handle  In the… Read more »

The Securitization of Fear in Post-Tsunami Sri Lanka

[This article is very relevant to the current crisis. – Ed] The production of crises, including the fear and xenophobia they instill, remains a pressing concern because they legitimate grounds for exceptional interventions (Agamben 1998; Mountz 2004). States produce crisis and fear to obtain consent for securitization measures. Probing the ways in which fear is… Read more »

The Sri Lankan Peace Process at a Crossroads

Lessons, Opportunities and Ideas for Principled Negotiations and Conflict Transformation by Tyrol Ferdinands, Kumar Rupesinghe, Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Jayadeva Uyangoda, Norbert Ropers, January 2004 The_Sri_Lankan_Peace_Process_at_a_Crossroads__Lessons_Opportunities_and_Ideas_for_Principled_Negotiations_and_Conflict_Transformation Executive Summary and Recommendations The Sri Lankan peace process is at a crossroads.  Seven months after it withdrew from the talks, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) presented their proposal… Read more »

Statement by the President on the Situation in Sri Lanka and Detainee Photographs

by US President Barack Obama, Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, Washington, DC, May 13, 2009 For Immediate Release                              May 13, 2009 STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT ON THE SITUATION IN SRI LANKA AND DETAINEE PHOTOGRAPHS South Drive 4:12 P.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT: Hello, everybody. Sorry to keep you guys waiting. Good to see… Read more »

PEARL welcomes US sanctions against Sri Lankan army chief

by People for Equality and Relief in Lanka, Washington, D.C., February 14, 2020 Today, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo banned Sri Lanka’s army chief Shavendra Silva from entering the US due to “credible information of his involvement, through command responsibility, in gross violations of human rights, namely extrajudicial killings, by the 58th Division of… Read more »

U.S. Bars Sri Lankan Army Chief Accused of War Crimes

The sanctions are the first international action against Sri Lanka stemming from its brutal civil war. Several members of the new government are also accused of wartime abuses. by Maria Abi-Habib and Dharisha Bastians, The New York Times, February 15, 2020 NEW DELHI — The United States has imposed an entry bar on Sri Lanka’s army chief,… Read more »

Public Designation, Due to Gross Violations of Human Rights, of Shavendra Silva

of Sri Lanka Under Section 7031(c) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act by Michael R. Pompeo, US Secretary of State, Washington, DC, February 14, 2020 Press Statement https://www.state.gov/public-designation-due-to-gross-violations-of-human-rights-of-shavendra-silva-of-sri-lanka-under-section-7031c-of-the-department-of-state-foreign-operations-and-related-programs-appropriations-a/ The Department of State has designated Lieutenant General Shavendra Silva, current Commander of the Sri Lanka Army and Acting Chief of… Read more »

Erasing Tamil Eelam: De/Re Territorialisation in the Global War on Terror

by Ajay Parasram, pre-peer reviewed draft published in ‘Geopolitics,’ 17/4, 2012 Erasing_Tamil_Eelam_De_Re_Territorialisa This paper considers the Sri Lanka/Tamil Eelam conflict with attention to how its dramatic end can be explained through postcolonial territorial politics. I argue discourses of postcolonial nationalism and global terrorism aligned along domestic, regional, and international political levels to enable a military… Read more »

The LTTE and the 2002-2006 Peace Process in Sri Lanka

The Politics of Transformation by Suthaharan Nadarajah & Luxshi Vimalarajah, Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, Switzerland, 2008 The_Politics_of_Transformation_the_LTTE Introduction The conflict in Sri Lanka is one of the world’s most protracted and multi-faceted. It has been aptly described as a conflict “where economic, political and cultural deprivation and grievances of a minority have… Read more »

Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away with War Crimes

Book Review by Joe Glenton, ForcesWatch.net, January 29, 2020 That Britain outsources aspects of her habitually violent foreign policy is no revelation. The wars in Afghanistan and Libya, but perhaps most especially Iraq, saw a veritable mercenary gold rush as the unregulated hard men of disaster capitalism, mostly ex-soldiers, flooded into the lawless zones created… Read more »

From SAS to Merciless Mercenaries

A new book tells the story of an elite band of ex-special forces who wreaked havoc around the world. Their calling card? A live grenade in a wine glass by Neil Tweedie, Daily Mail, UK, February 1, 2020 Private military company KMS operated behind the scenes in the 1970s and 80s  It did jobs that would… Read more »

HRW: Repeal Abusive Counterterrorism Law

Uphold Pledges to United Nations, European Union by Human Rights Watch, New York, January 10, 2020 (New York) – The Sri Lankan government should abide by its commitments to replace the abusive Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) with legislation that respects its international human rights obligations, Human Rights Watch said today. The cabinet of President Gotabaya… Read more »

Civil War Along Ethnoreligious Lines

by Berkley Center, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, August 1, 2013 This case study addresses the underlying ethnic and religious tensions behind the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983-2009), a conflict led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) on behalf of the Hindu Tamil minority against the Sri Lankan government and the Buddhist Sinhalese majority…. Read more »

Sinhalization of the North-East: Pulmoaddai

by People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL), September, 2019 Sinhalization of the North-East: Pulmoaddai – People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (pearlaction.org) Pulmoaddai is a majority Tamil-speaking, Muslim town in the Trincomalee District. The town, part of the Kuchchaveli Divisional Secretariat, is located on the border to the Mullaithivu District, occupying the… Read more »

The Role of Emerging Technologies in Military Conflicts

by Izumi Nakamitsu, Inter-Press Service (IPS) Izumi Nakamitsu is UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs* STOCKHOLM, Oct 10 2019 (IPS) – Throughout history, technology has transformed armed conflict. The carnage of First World War battlefields is a stark example of what happens when advances in weaponry outpace the normative frameworks around its use. Today, we are experiencing… Read more »