Posts Categorized: Other

http://30yearsago.asia/portfolio/framed-memories/ Mary Gunawathy Varatharajah Mary Gunawathy Varatharajah (alias Poonga), did not want to become a teacher or a doctor or an engineer as the Tamil community in Sri Lanka aspires to be, instead she has broken the traditional barriers, and chosen to be a fighter. She joined the armed struggle after “Black July” to fight… Read more »

133 war affected women and 20 organisations have today urged the new government to take immediate steps to address past violations and to initiate credible and independent investigations that lead to indictments and prosecutions of alleged perpetrators. We publish below the statement in full; We, as women impacted by war and ongoing post-war violence in… Read more »

by Jared Genser, ‘The Diplomat,’ January 15, 2015 http://thediplomat.com/2015/01/look-back-to-move-forward-advice-to-the-new-sri-lanka-president/ This week, Sri Lankans welcome their first new president in a decade. In an election called two years ahead of schedule, surprise incumbent challenger and former Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena narrowly, albeit impressively, defeated outgoing President Mahinda Rajapaksa. But while the face of Sri Lankan politics… Read more »

Introductory Note The 40th anniversary of the 4th International Tamil Research Conference held in Jaffna (January 3-9) had passed by silently. The sad event of January 10th, 1974 in which nine Tamils lost their lives was one of the trend setting episodes which generated the Eelam Campaign of late 1970s among Tamil militant youth. As… Read more »

The Indo-Lanka Accord and the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution  were drafted nearly 30 years ago.  Successive Indian governments have attached a lot of importance to it.  There have been many debates over it in the past.   Post-2009, new debates on it have again been pushed to the fore. I have always… Read more »

Mano, a 29-year-old Tamil man, was arrested in March 2007 “on suspicion” of being a member of the opposition Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and held for years without ever facing trial; while in custody he has been tortured. Several years after the end of the war in Sri Lanka, hundreds of people are languishing… Read more »

This is the devastation left behind after 26 long years of civil war. Thousands died in Sri Lanka during the government’s clash with the ethnic Tamil people, fighting for their own homeland. Now the war zone is a wasteland, its earth scorched and pocked by craters. Cars and trucks lie overturned near bunkers beside clusters… Read more »

Repression-of-Dissent-in-Sri-Lanka-June-2014-English-07Aug2014 http://srilankabrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Repression-of-Dissent-in-Sri-Lanka-June-2014-English-07Aug2014.pdf Summary: June 2014 will be remembered in Sri Lanka for the communal violence in the towns of Aluthgama and Beruwala in Southern Sri Lanka, that resulted in 4 persons (three Muslims and one Tamil) being killed, more than 80 injured and widespread damage to property, mainly of Muslims. The widely held belief, including… Read more »

Having recently emerged from a long war and still mired in a host of issues relating to that conflict, including the unsettled question of Tamil political aspirations that first gave rise to it, Sri Lanka could have done far better with the opportunity it had to remake itself. Instead, the narrow political ambitions of its leaders to consolidate majority sentiment seem to be driving the Sinhala nationalist desire for new enemies.

SITTWE, Myanmar — Minura Begum has been in labor for almost 24 hours, and the baby is stuck. Worse, it’s turned around, one tiny foot already emerging into the world in a difficult breech delivery that threatens the lives of mother and child alike. Twenty-three years old and delivering her first child, Minura desperately needs… Read more »

  “The sovereignty of Sri Lanka is very much intact. And we want it to remain intact. We are Sri Lankans… And we don’t want Sri Lanka’s sovereignty to be impacted upon.” R. Sampanthan (Leader of the TNA), Al-Jazeera, 26 March 2014 Sri Lanka’s post-war politics has come to be defined by her inability to… Read more »

by Sarah Stodder, ‘The Diplomat,’ April 9, 2014 Sanjeev sits nervously in a scuffed plastic chair, half-listening to the sounds of the road outside the displacement camp where he lives. Seven years have passed since his involvement in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the militant separatist organization that claimed a homeland for Sri… Read more »

by Human Rights Watch, February 26, 2014 (New York) – The United Nations Human Rights Council should adopt the recommendation of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay to create an independent international inquiry into war crimes and other serious abuses committed during Sri Lanka’s armed conflict. The Human Rights Council will discuss the report during… Read more »

As elaborated in the attached situation and incidents reports,militarization was and continues to be the major impediment to the enjoyment of civil, political and socio-economic rights in the province.The exercise of the franchise is no exception to this. CMEV as well asother monitors recorded a number of complaints of threat and intimidation allegedly by members of the security forces including the Civil Defence Force, Their involvement in the campaigns of ruling party candidates – four in particular were mentioned in this regard- and even intimidating presence on election day. Militarization was underscored in the remarks made by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights at the end of her visit to Sri Lanka just under a month before the election – 25-31 August 2013- and as required by the March 2013 resolution on Sri Lanka in the Council, in her oral remarks to the Council just after the election. The High Commissioner expressed her grave concern that civilians who had met with her had been questioned by the military before and after their meeting with her.The extent of militarization in the daily lives of the civilian population and the political objectives it serves, attests to its embedding and institutionalization in the context in which the election campaign andpolling was held. In this respect militarization clearly undermined the integrity of the electoral process, with the overall voter turnout figure and result representing a popular backlash in defiance against it.

http://amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA37/021/2013/en/228da3d6-d328-426d-ace4-7c2fc5dcd04f/asa370212013en.pdf Amnesty No Accountability Aug 28 2013 Amnesty’s Live Wire blog film on “Sri Lanka’s Authorities Must Tell the Trut” 29th August 2013 Index Number: ASA 37/021/2013 UN Human Rights Council Twenty-Fourth Session 9th-27th September Item 4 Still no human rights accountability in Sri Lanka: still no end to serious human rights violations Sri Lanka… Read more »