යටගිය දවස බරණැස් නුවර මායාවති නම් රැජනක රාජ්ය කර වදාරන සමයෙහි ඊට නුදුරින් රාජපක්සදීපය නමින් සසිරිබර පුණ්යවන්ත රාජ්යයක් වූයේය. පද බිඳෙන අයුරින් මේ ද්වීපයේ නම දෙ අරුතක් ගති. ඒ කෙසේද යත්: රාජ-පක්ස-දීපය (The Land of Royal-Loyals) හා රාජ-පක්-සදීපය (The Good Land of Royal Dicks) ලෙසිනි. හුදී ජනයෝ, තම තම නැණ පමණින්, තම තම උදර පෝෂණයේ හා කුටුම්භ රක්ෂණයේ අභිමතාර්ථයන්ට පටහැණි නොවන ආකාරයෙන් මේ දෙ අරුතින් එකක් භාවිතා කළෝය.
එකල්හි මේ රාජ්යයේ රජකළ මහ රජ්ජුරුවන් වහන්සේ උත්තර දේශයෙහි වැසි අසූ කෙළක් පර සතුරු බල බිඳ විජයග්රහණයෙන් ඔද වැඩී අමන්දානන්දයට පත්ව සත් මසක් තිස්සේ ප්රීතෝත්සව පවත්වන්නාහුය. දන්සැල් පවත්වන්නාහුය. මඟ යන්නෝ සිහ ධජය ඔසවා වළක්වා ඔවුනට බලයෙන්ම ගිතෙල් මිශ්ර ඇඹුල් කිරිබත් කවන්නාහුය. පසල් දනව් වැසි මානවකයෝ දේශප්රේමයෙන් මඬනා ලද්දෝ සිහ ධජයෙන් අමුඩ ගසා, එම්බල දෙමළ කොල්ලනි, තොපිට මේ අප නිය පිටින් ගැසුවා පමණකැයි කේසර සිංහ නාද කොට මහත් වූ කෝලාහල කරන්නෝය. මහ රජාණෝද මා හා සම කළැකි අන් කවර නිරිඳකු සිංහබාහු පුත් විජයන්ගේ පටන් පහළ වී දැයි සිතන්නෝ, සිතාගත නොහී මම්ම මේ දෙරණට උතුම් වන්නෙම්ය සැක හැර දැන හැඳින, මහ සඟරුවනට ඇත් පැටවුන් පුදා බාර හාර ඔප්පුකොට, උන්ට විපක්ෂවූ රන්න පොනිල් නම් අමාත්යවරයාගේ අධෝමාර්ගයෙහි මහත් වූ ගැටැති මුගුරක් යවන්නාක් සේ වධ කොට, දැහැමෙන් සෙමෙන් රාජ්යය විචාරන්නහුය.
මෙසේ රාජ්ය කරන කල්හි මහ රජ්ජුරුවන් වහන්සේට මහත් වූ පැණයෙක් වන්නේය. ඒ කුමක්ද යත්: උන් වහන්සේගේ සෙනෙවිරත්හු ජනී ජනයා පෙළන්නෝය. මහ සෙනෙවි පුතුනට සතුරු වූ මානවකයන් පැහැර ගොස් තළා පෙළා දමන්නෝය. උන්ට පරුෂ වචනයෙන් සංග්රහ කරන්නෝය. තමන්ට නැති හිසක් උනට ඇති නියාව දැක ඊර්ෂ්යා පරවශව ඒ හිසට පොළු මුගුරින් පහර දෙන්නෝය. මහ සෙනෙවිරදුන් හා සාද වූ නගර ශෝභිනීන්ගේ බස් අසා අහිංසකයන් මරා මහ වීදියෙහි දමන්නෝය.
එකල්හි හුදී ජනයා මේ කවර නම් විපතෙක්දැයි සිතා තුමූම කිරිබත් කැවූ සෙනෙවිරදුන්ගේ මෑණියන් සිහිකොට නින්දාපරවශ කරන්නෝය. සෙනෙවිරත් පායයන් අභිමුඛයේ ඝෝෂා කරන්නෝය. අන්තර්ජාලයෙහි බොලොග ලියන අමනයෝ සෙනෙවිරදුන්ට කැට මුගුරු වලින් පහර දිය යුතුය බණන්නෝය. මේ සෙනෙවිරදුනට දණ්ඩන නොපණවන්නේ මන්දැයි මහරජතුමන්ගෙන් අසන්නෝය.
එකල්හි අප මහ රජ්ජුරුවෝ කෝපාග්නියෙන් දැවී, එම්බා ජනයිනි, මේ සෙනෙවිරත්හු මගේ ප්රාණ සම මිත්රයෝය. උහු මට මන්ත්රීශ්වරණයේදී නේක උපකාර කළාහුය. මගේ එදිරිවාදීන්ගේ පායන් ගිනිබත් කළෝය. උන්ගේ අතවැස්සන්ට පොළු මුගුරු වලින් පැටි කළ බිව් කිරි මුවින් වෑහෙන්නට තරම් වන සංග්රහ කළෝය. මුන් නොවේ නම් මතු දින මගේ සැඳැ පැස (වර්තමාන ව්යවහාරය අනුව ‘ඡන්ද පෙට්ටි’) පුරවා මගේ විජයග්රහණය සහතික කරන්නාහු තොපේ මෑණියන්දෑද කියා පෙරළා හුදී ජනයා විචාලෝය. මේ පුණ්යභූමියෙහි වසන්නෝ දෙවර්ගයෙකි. දේශප්රේමියෝ හෙවත් රාජප්රේමියෝය. නැතොත් දේශද්රොහියෝ හෙවත් රාජද්රෝහියෝය. තොප අයත් වන්නේ උන්ටද මුන්ටදැයි අඩි පොළොවේ ගසා, මේඝ ගර්ජනා කළෝය. හුදී ජනයෝද වික්රමතුංග මානවකයා ගිය මඟ යනු නොකැමැත්තෝ, නුඹ වහන්සේට යහපත් නම් අපට තව කවර නම් පුක්ඛාබාධයක් වේදැයි මුවින් නොබැණ ඉවසා වදාරන්නෝ, මහරජ්ජුරුවන් වහන්සේගේ මෑණියන් වහන්සේටද පුණ්යානුමෝදනා කොට, තම මුක පූට්ටුකර ගත්තෝය.
එතෙකින් නොනැවතුණු අප මහ රජ්ජුරුවන් වහන්සේ චුල්ල ධීවර තෙමේ දැල් පියා තෝරුන් මෝරුන් හැර හාල්මැස්සන් අල්වා ගන්නේ යම්සේද, එසේම මහ සෙනෙවිරදුන් හැර පියා, චුල්ල සෙනෙවියන් අල්ලාගෙන අධිකරණ ශාලාවට ගෙනැවිත් උන්ට මින් මතු මෙවන් අපරාධ නොකරැයි තරයේ අවවාද කොට, එමතු නොව උන්ට දණ්ඩෙන් පහර බැගින් දී නිදහස් කළාහුය. එදුටු තිස් තුන් කෝටියක් සම්යක් දෘෂ්ඨික දේවතා තෙමේ මතු නොව මරණින් මතු භූතාත්ම භාවයට පත්ව සිටින්නා වූ ප්රභාකරන් නම් වූ චණ්ඩ වු සොරදෙටුවාද චිත්ත ප්රීතියට පත්ව සාධුකාර දුන්නේය. එතෙකින් පසු යුක්තිය පසිඳලීම ගැන අප මහ රජ්ජුරුවන් වහන්සේගේ කීර්තිය දේශ දේශාන්තරයන්හි පතළේය.
හුදී ජන පහන් සංවේගය තකා රචිත චුල්ල රාජපක්ස ජාතක කතා වස්තුව මින් නිමියේය.
Thanks to Taboo. No one can't stop. Even you also can't.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
SLA massacred civilians in bunkers - medical worker
[TamilNet, Monday, 07 September 2009, 08:57 GMT]
The advancing Sri Lanka Army massacred civilians by paving their bunkers with tanks, by throwing explosives inside the bunkers and by shooting the injured, says a medical worker who came out of Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal during the last days of the war, became incarcerated in a camp and now escaped the island. "Around a hundred thousand captured civilians herded to Mullaiththeevu were kept in rows within barbed wires, most of the time without water or food under the hot sun, and were bullied and ill treated with arrogance," he writes in a lengthy note that reached TamilNet this week. The note in Tamil was provided by the Norwegian Tamils Health Organisation (NTHO), urging TamilNet not to reveal the identity of the health worker for reasons of his security.
The medical worker was injured in a fire-bomb attack of the SLA on May 12th.
On alleged earlier firing on civilians, who in desperation tried to get into SLA controlled area, and on violence in recruitment during the last days that especially affected the families of LTTE heroes and fighters, the medical worker attributed responsibility to some elements long infiltrated into the LTTE, to work on behalf of Colombo. LTTE senior ranks were shaken by such treachery, he writes.
Further personal observations culled out from his notes follow:
Colombo particularly targeted hospitals and makeshift hospitals. When people moved away from Ki'linochchi, its hospital started functioning in the school building at Udaiyaar-kaddu. More than two thousand shells were fired on this building by the SLA.
Ki’linochchi to Tharmapuram, Vaddakkachchi, Visuvamadu, Udaiyaar-kaddu, Puthukkudiyiruppu – until reaching Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal, at an average 50 civilians were killed every day in Sri Lankan attacks. 8000 were already killed before herded into Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal.
Medical work decimated and workers were shaken at the death of patients, nurses and workers.
When there were more than 300,000 people, Colombo sent food for only 30,000.
Important medicines such as anaesthetic drugs were not sent. Life-saving surgery without anaesthesia was a cursing ordeal for the patients as well as doctors.
Mothers and children standing in queue to receive infant milk food were targeted in the SL shell attacks. Without seeing no one could visualize the sorrow of the child that lost the mother and the mother who lost the child.
SLA shell attacks, guided by spy craft were targeted on queues for gruel also. Despite casualties the queue would form again.
While even gruel was scarce to people, lands they cultivated were harvested by the SLA.
At one stage, the LTTE leadership ordered food meant for combatants to be shared with civilians. The fighters fought only with gruel food and to the last LTTE served gruel to people.
Around 1000 waterholes were dug and several hundreds of toilets were made for civilians at the initiative of the LTTE. Water often mixed with sand was collected in shell-halves and was filtered by cloth.
There were no epidemics.
Pregnant mothers and infants bearing shell fragments came to makeshift hospitals.
These hospitals functioned 24 hours and wailing was always heard around them.
Many dead bodies couldn’t be buried in certain situations of SL attacks and hungry dogs dragged them.
Every time moving patents to ICRC vessel there will be targeted shelling from the SLA. A few hundreds taken for ICRC treatment died. How that happened was not known and whom to ask.
Even in emaciated conditions people donated blood for treatment and some of them later died of their own injuries.
More than a thousand people were killed on the day when the SLA entered into Maaththa’lan and Pokka’nai (20th April).
On May 15th and 16th the SLA entered and rampaged the pocket of land crowded with nearly a hundred thousand people.
I had to pass through at least around 300 bodies when I came out. Some were alive but couldn’t walk. I helped a few who could walk. Some held my feet when I tried to go away. What could I do?
There is a long list of people who were eliminated and disappeared after capture by the SLA. The army-controlled area was a place where murders took place in front of one’s eyes.
In Mullaiththeevu, a hundred thousand people made to stand in rows would all of a sudden be ordered to squat by the SL army. The soldiers would make sadistic laugh at seeing the melee of people falling on each other in the exercise.
Long poles were used to beat the people and to threaten them.
Old and young stood under hot sun for a long time, immensely suffering from thirst.
Mullaiththeevu to Vavuniyaa was scenery of disaster.
There were 20 to 25 people in a tent in the internment camp at Cheddiku’lam. Food was sometimes thrown from a vehicle.
Everyday in the internment camp around 30 people died.
It was a place of epidemics.
Thousands suffered of Chicken Pox, hundreds had brain fever, many elders died and some committed suicide.
The bribe to SL army for a person to come out was several hundred thousands of rupees.
In the last days of the war over 18,000 killed, more than 5,000 lost limbs, more than 7,000 seriously injured and several thousands suffered minor injuries. Several thousands suffer mental illnesses. More than a hundred medical workers- doctors, nurses and volunteers perished.
Knowledge and exercise of precaution reduced casualty. No one died of any epidemic under LTTE control.
Several thousands of Sinhala youth of the SLA, from poor families, regrettably laid down their life in the war.
The sadistic lust of Mahinda Rajapaksa is very astonishing - inflicting pain on ordinary civilians in every possible way, and then projecting that as forms of his soothing operation to the outside world.
The world may forget, but Tamils will never forget the true face of the civilisation of 21st century, the world has shown to them, writes the medical worker in his notes.
The advancing Sri Lanka Army massacred civilians by paving their bunkers with tanks, by throwing explosives inside the bunkers and by shooting the injured, says a medical worker who came out of Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal during the last days of the war, became incarcerated in a camp and now escaped the island. "Around a hundred thousand captured civilians herded to Mullaiththeevu were kept in rows within barbed wires, most of the time without water or food under the hot sun, and were bullied and ill treated with arrogance," he writes in a lengthy note that reached TamilNet this week. The note in Tamil was provided by the Norwegian Tamils Health Organisation (NTHO), urging TamilNet not to reveal the identity of the health worker for reasons of his security.
The medical worker was injured in a fire-bomb attack of the SLA on May 12th.
On alleged earlier firing on civilians, who in desperation tried to get into SLA controlled area, and on violence in recruitment during the last days that especially affected the families of LTTE heroes and fighters, the medical worker attributed responsibility to some elements long infiltrated into the LTTE, to work on behalf of Colombo. LTTE senior ranks were shaken by such treachery, he writes.
Further personal observations culled out from his notes follow:
Colombo particularly targeted hospitals and makeshift hospitals. When people moved away from Ki'linochchi, its hospital started functioning in the school building at Udaiyaar-kaddu. More than two thousand shells were fired on this building by the SLA.
Ki’linochchi to Tharmapuram, Vaddakkachchi, Visuvamadu, Udaiyaar-kaddu, Puthukkudiyiruppu – until reaching Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal, at an average 50 civilians were killed every day in Sri Lankan attacks. 8000 were already killed before herded into Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal.
Medical work decimated and workers were shaken at the death of patients, nurses and workers.
When there were more than 300,000 people, Colombo sent food for only 30,000.
Important medicines such as anaesthetic drugs were not sent. Life-saving surgery without anaesthesia was a cursing ordeal for the patients as well as doctors.
Mothers and children standing in queue to receive infant milk food were targeted in the SL shell attacks. Without seeing no one could visualize the sorrow of the child that lost the mother and the mother who lost the child.
SLA shell attacks, guided by spy craft were targeted on queues for gruel also. Despite casualties the queue would form again.
While even gruel was scarce to people, lands they cultivated were harvested by the SLA.
At one stage, the LTTE leadership ordered food meant for combatants to be shared with civilians. The fighters fought only with gruel food and to the last LTTE served gruel to people.
Around 1000 waterholes were dug and several hundreds of toilets were made for civilians at the initiative of the LTTE. Water often mixed with sand was collected in shell-halves and was filtered by cloth.
There were no epidemics.
Pregnant mothers and infants bearing shell fragments came to makeshift hospitals.
These hospitals functioned 24 hours and wailing was always heard around them.
Many dead bodies couldn’t be buried in certain situations of SL attacks and hungry dogs dragged them.
Every time moving patents to ICRC vessel there will be targeted shelling from the SLA. A few hundreds taken for ICRC treatment died. How that happened was not known and whom to ask.
Even in emaciated conditions people donated blood for treatment and some of them later died of their own injuries.
More than a thousand people were killed on the day when the SLA entered into Maaththa’lan and Pokka’nai (20th April).
On May 15th and 16th the SLA entered and rampaged the pocket of land crowded with nearly a hundred thousand people.
I had to pass through at least around 300 bodies when I came out. Some were alive but couldn’t walk. I helped a few who could walk. Some held my feet when I tried to go away. What could I do?
There is a long list of people who were eliminated and disappeared after capture by the SLA. The army-controlled area was a place where murders took place in front of one’s eyes.
In Mullaiththeevu, a hundred thousand people made to stand in rows would all of a sudden be ordered to squat by the SL army. The soldiers would make sadistic laugh at seeing the melee of people falling on each other in the exercise.
Long poles were used to beat the people and to threaten them.
Old and young stood under hot sun for a long time, immensely suffering from thirst.
Mullaiththeevu to Vavuniyaa was scenery of disaster.
There were 20 to 25 people in a tent in the internment camp at Cheddiku’lam. Food was sometimes thrown from a vehicle.
Everyday in the internment camp around 30 people died.
It was a place of epidemics.
Thousands suffered of Chicken Pox, hundreds had brain fever, many elders died and some committed suicide.
The bribe to SL army for a person to come out was several hundred thousands of rupees.
In the last days of the war over 18,000 killed, more than 5,000 lost limbs, more than 7,000 seriously injured and several thousands suffered minor injuries. Several thousands suffer mental illnesses. More than a hundred medical workers- doctors, nurses and volunteers perished.
Knowledge and exercise of precaution reduced casualty. No one died of any epidemic under LTTE control.
Several thousands of Sinhala youth of the SLA, from poor families, regrettably laid down their life in the war.
The sadistic lust of Mahinda Rajapaksa is very astonishing - inflicting pain on ordinary civilians in every possible way, and then projecting that as forms of his soothing operation to the outside world.
The world may forget, but Tamils will never forget the true face of the civilisation of 21st century, the world has shown to them, writes the medical worker in his notes.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Obama extolled Sri Lanka Journalist given prison term, says NYT
[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 September 2009, 04:09 GMT]
Noting that J.S. Tissainayagam was picked by President Obama on World Press Freedom Day as a “symbol of oppression of the media,” the New York Times (NYT) Tuesday reported that this editor of a crusading magazine in SriLanka was sentenced by the island’s court for writing critical articles on the Sri Lanka government’s offensive against Tamils. The NYT, quoting two prominent staffers at the Colombo-based think-tank Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA), said that the sentence was a very serious blow [to journalism], that the law under which the sentence was passed “ is so vague that practically any speech could be prosecuted,” and that it is unacceptable that the Court would give maximum sentence to a journalist for simply doing his job.
Full text of the NYT article follows:
On World Press Freedom Day in May, President Obama held up J. S. Tissainayagam, the editor of a crusading magazine in Sri Lanka who has been jailed since March 2008, as a symbol of the oppression of the media.
On Monday, a judge in Sri Lanka sentenced Mr. Tissainayagam to 20 years of hard labor for violating the country’s tough antiterrorism laws by writing articles highly critical of a government military offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels who had controlled a large chunk of Sri Lanka’s north.
Mr. Tissainayagam, who is Tamil, was the editor of the now-defunct North Eastern Monthly magazine, and was accused of accepting money and other support from the Tigers. He was convicted under laws that give harsh sentences for offenses like using racially divisive language or promoting disharmony. These laws were enacted in response to the Tamil Tiger insurgency. The insurgents, members of the Hindu Tamil minority, sought a separate state from Sri Lanka’s Buddhist, Sinhalese majority. The government decisively defeated the Tigers in a bloody final battle on a strip of beach in northern Sri Lanka in May, ending one of Asia’s longest civil wars.
As is often the case with local journalists in conflict zones, Mr. Tissainayagam’s reporting reflected the prevailing point of view of the minority to which he belonged, but the government argued that his work went further.
“The Constitution itself gives freedom of press, but that doesn’t allow anybody to spread false information to spur ethnic violence,” Sudarshana DeSilva, the prosecutor, told the court, Reuters reported.
But rights advocates say that Mr. Tissainayagam’s sentence reflects the plight of Sri Lanka’s embattled press corps. At least seven journalists have been killed since 2007, including some singled out by the Tamil Tigers. Many more have fled the country.
“It is very serious blow,” said Sanjana Hattotuwa, editor of Groundviews, a citizen journalism Web site. “It sends a chilling message that the independent expression of opinion is no longer tolerated in Sri Lanka.”
Lucien Rajakarunanayake, spokesman for Sri Lanka’s president and a columnist, said that Mr. Tissainayagam had the right to appeal.
“The court has believed the evidence placed before it,” Mr. Rajakarunanayake said. “That he did accept money from a terrorist organization and did work that furthered the cause of terrorism in this country.”
The sentence is sure to increase pressure from the West on Sri Lanka’s government, which has been criticized for its handling of the last battle against the Tamil Tigers and the treatment of Tamils displaced by the war.
Mr. Tissainayagam’s lawyer told reporters that he planned to appeal. Though he confessed, he later said that the confession was given under duress. Legal experts said that the antiterrorism laws under which he was convicted violated the Constitution.
Asanga Welikala, a lawyer who has written on press freedom in Sri Lanka, said that the law was so vague that practically any speech could be prosecuted. “Totally unacceptable that we should have such a law, and even more unacceptable that a court of law should feel that this journalist should get the maximum possible sentence under that law for simply doing his job,” he said.
TamilNet
Noting that J.S. Tissainayagam was picked by President Obama on World Press Freedom Day as a “symbol of oppression of the media,” the New York Times (NYT) Tuesday reported that this editor of a crusading magazine in SriLanka was sentenced by the island’s court for writing critical articles on the Sri Lanka government’s offensive against Tamils. The NYT, quoting two prominent staffers at the Colombo-based think-tank Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA), said that the sentence was a very serious blow [to journalism], that the law under which the sentence was passed “ is so vague that practically any speech could be prosecuted,” and that it is unacceptable that the Court would give maximum sentence to a journalist for simply doing his job.
Full text of the NYT article follows:
On World Press Freedom Day in May, President Obama held up J. S. Tissainayagam, the editor of a crusading magazine in Sri Lanka who has been jailed since March 2008, as a symbol of the oppression of the media.
On Monday, a judge in Sri Lanka sentenced Mr. Tissainayagam to 20 years of hard labor for violating the country’s tough antiterrorism laws by writing articles highly critical of a government military offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels who had controlled a large chunk of Sri Lanka’s north.
Mr. Tissainayagam, who is Tamil, was the editor of the now-defunct North Eastern Monthly magazine, and was accused of accepting money and other support from the Tigers. He was convicted under laws that give harsh sentences for offenses like using racially divisive language or promoting disharmony. These laws were enacted in response to the Tamil Tiger insurgency. The insurgents, members of the Hindu Tamil minority, sought a separate state from Sri Lanka’s Buddhist, Sinhalese majority. The government decisively defeated the Tigers in a bloody final battle on a strip of beach in northern Sri Lanka in May, ending one of Asia’s longest civil wars.
As is often the case with local journalists in conflict zones, Mr. Tissainayagam’s reporting reflected the prevailing point of view of the minority to which he belonged, but the government argued that his work went further.
“The Constitution itself gives freedom of press, but that doesn’t allow anybody to spread false information to spur ethnic violence,” Sudarshana DeSilva, the prosecutor, told the court, Reuters reported.
But rights advocates say that Mr. Tissainayagam’s sentence reflects the plight of Sri Lanka’s embattled press corps. At least seven journalists have been killed since 2007, including some singled out by the Tamil Tigers. Many more have fled the country.
“It is very serious blow,” said Sanjana Hattotuwa, editor of Groundviews, a citizen journalism Web site. “It sends a chilling message that the independent expression of opinion is no longer tolerated in Sri Lanka.”
Lucien Rajakarunanayake, spokesman for Sri Lanka’s president and a columnist, said that Mr. Tissainayagam had the right to appeal.
“The court has believed the evidence placed before it,” Mr. Rajakarunanayake said. “That he did accept money from a terrorist organization and did work that furthered the cause of terrorism in this country.”
The sentence is sure to increase pressure from the West on Sri Lanka’s government, which has been criticized for its handling of the last battle against the Tamil Tigers and the treatment of Tamils displaced by the war.
Mr. Tissainayagam’s lawyer told reporters that he planned to appeal. Though he confessed, he later said that the confession was given under duress. Legal experts said that the antiterrorism laws under which he was convicted violated the Constitution.
Asanga Welikala, a lawyer who has written on press freedom in Sri Lanka, said that the law was so vague that practically any speech could be prosecuted. “Totally unacceptable that we should have such a law, and even more unacceptable that a court of law should feel that this journalist should get the maximum possible sentence under that law for simply doing his job,” he said.
TamilNet
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Lopsided sovereignty sentences Tissainayagam - journalist
[TamilNet, Monday, 31 August 2009, 19:50 GMT]
If Tissainayagam is sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for 'inciting communal feelings' by editing, printing or distributing North Eastern Herald Monthly, what should be the punishment to Sarath Fonseka, who as commander of the armed forces publicly said Sri Lanka belongs to the Sinhalese, mutilating the constitution and inciting genocide in the island, asks a senior journalist in Colombo. Unfortunately there are governments and diplomats who deceive humanity by projecting Sri Lanka as a ‘democratically elected government', besides multi national corporations, who don’t care freedom of people but grabbing opportunities in the island and there are also media such as The Hindu in India and a host of others in the international community praising Colombo on its ‘successes’ in ethnic totalitarianism, the journalist said.
“While on one hand verbally urging Colombo to curb impunity in human rights, the international community on the other hand rationalises the impunity of state terrorism and illegitimate sovereignty of Sri Lanka in the island."
"India and the powers diluting the national question in the island as minority issue will never address the crisis in the island but will only contribute to the escalation of state terrorism in all its forms. Tissainayagam case is a classic example,” the journalist commented.
If unchecked, the dangerous experiment of powers in the island, setting an ugly precedence in contemporary history, is going to be a serious challenge to the free world, the journalist further said.
The sentence to Tissainayagam is seen in the Tamil circles as a response of Colombo to the leak of a video clip allegedly showing extra-judicial killings of Sri Lanka army. The video clip was released last Tuesday by a group of Sinhala and Tamil journalists called Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka.
Tamilnet
If Tissainayagam is sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for 'inciting communal feelings' by editing, printing or distributing North Eastern Herald Monthly, what should be the punishment to Sarath Fonseka, who as commander of the armed forces publicly said Sri Lanka belongs to the Sinhalese, mutilating the constitution and inciting genocide in the island, asks a senior journalist in Colombo. Unfortunately there are governments and diplomats who deceive humanity by projecting Sri Lanka as a ‘democratically elected government', besides multi national corporations, who don’t care freedom of people but grabbing opportunities in the island and there are also media such as The Hindu in India and a host of others in the international community praising Colombo on its ‘successes’ in ethnic totalitarianism, the journalist said.
“While on one hand verbally urging Colombo to curb impunity in human rights, the international community on the other hand rationalises the impunity of state terrorism and illegitimate sovereignty of Sri Lanka in the island."
"India and the powers diluting the national question in the island as minority issue will never address the crisis in the island but will only contribute to the escalation of state terrorism in all its forms. Tissainayagam case is a classic example,” the journalist commented.
If unchecked, the dangerous experiment of powers in the island, setting an ugly precedence in contemporary history, is going to be a serious challenge to the free world, the journalist further said.
The sentence to Tissainayagam is seen in the Tamil circles as a response of Colombo to the leak of a video clip allegedly showing extra-judicial killings of Sri Lanka army. The video clip was released last Tuesday by a group of Sinhala and Tamil journalists called Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka.
Tamilnet
Monday, August 31, 2009
Shame: A disturbing inability to treat Tamils as fellow human beings
by Tisaranee Gunasekara
"You who live safe,
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man…" - Primo Levi (If this is a Man)
The next cycle of the ‘Tamil problem’ has commenced unseen and unheeded, in the rain clogged internment camps up North.
The timing of the monsoon season was no secret, and yet hardly a thought was given by the authorities to its all too predictable consequences. The monsoons have barely begun and already most of the camps are deluged by rain water, placing every basic facility, from cooking to sanitation, beyond the reach of their wretched inmates.
The seasonal rains will cause floods in many parts of Sri Lanka; but unlike other affected citizens, the more than 250,000 Tamils in the Northern ‘welfare villages’ cannot leave their inundated places of residence for shelter and dry ground. Imprisoned by barbed wire fences and gun toting soldiers, the IDPs have no choice but to bear this latest horror just as they have borne every other calamity, with sullen, festering silence.
If the rains flooded the camps holding two hundred and fifty thousand Sinhala Buddhists imprisoned, depriving them of every basic facility, the South would not have ignored their suffering and the Southern media would not have permitted the government to deny their plight. Our collective silence in the face of the unfolding tragedy in the North indicates a disturbing inability to treat Tamils as fellow human beings, let alone citizens with equal rights.
Our collective failure to condemn this massive injustice that is being perpetrated in our name demonstrates that the mindset which enabled the Black July, not so much the evil of an active minority as the indifference of a silent majority, is alive and well in the South. We know and yet we chose to ignore. To paraphrase Bruno Bettelheim, ‘when hundreds of thousands are incarcerated, none but a guileless child remains innocent. We are all tainted by it. The rest of us are not innocent, but intent on keeping ourselves ignorant’.
The regime knows that the monsoons have turned the camps into a watery hell, and yet, it does nothing. Rhetorical flourishes apart, the Rajapakse administration never concerned itself with the safety and wellbeing of civilian Tamils in the North and the East during the war. When an occasional concession was made (such as ceasing/limiting the use of bombing and shelling during the last phase of the war), it was in response to Indian or international pressure. With the conclusive defeat of the LTTE, India and the world have lost whatever capacity they previously had to nudge the Rajapakses away from more extreme measures.
Armed with a near total sense of impunity, the regime is treating Tamils with a degree of injustice that was inconceivable just one year ago. After all, the thought of the entire population of Killinochchi and Mulaitivu districts being imprisoned in barbed wire enclosures, after the war, was unthinkable - until it became a fait accompli. Today it is an integral part of reality which many ignore, some justify and only a few oppose. The unthinkable has become normal with a degree of rapidity and a measure of completeness which bodes ill for the future. (The pledge to resettle the incarcerated IDPs in 180 days will meet the same fate as the promise to implement the 13th amendment in full as soon as possible and to explore ways of devolving even more power, made by President Rajapakse to the then Indian Foreign Minister, on January 27th this year - according to a statement tabled in Sri Lankan parliament by Deputy Foreign Minister, Hussein Bhaila).
Normalising Discrimination
The Northern internment camps are a leitmotiv of the Rajapakse approach to peace, just as child soldiers and suicide bombers were a leitmotiv of the Tiger approach to ‘national liberation’. The fact that almost the entire population of Killinochchi and Mullaitivu districts is being forcibly kept in open prisons is not a mere detail to be overlooked or brushed aside. It is an essential element, a formative factor of post-war Sri Lanka. The Northern camps would have been not just impossible but also inconceivable, without the retrogressive paradigmatic shift towards a Sinhala supremacist ethos. If any Tamil can be a Tiger, it makes sense to incarcerate every resident of those Northern districts once under LTTE control, in order to capture a few thousand Tigers.
If most Tamils are prone to Tiger sympathies, trying to win them over makes no sense; it is better to treat them with suspicion and cow them into obedience. An administration which sees a Tiger in almost any Tamil is likely to eschew a political solution to the ethnic problem (or even development) in favour of more soldiers and more weapons, as the best path to peace and stability. The statement by the Chief of Defence Staff, General Sarath Fonseka that the number of security forces personnel deployed in the Jaffna peninsula has been more than doubled from 15.000 to 35,000, post-war, makes sense in this politico-psychological context, as does the declaration by the Defence Secretary that military expenditure for 2010 will remain at 2009 levels (US$1.6 billion). The peace envisioned by the regime is not a peace based on consent but on force.
The country had a glimpse of what abusive authorities do to free Sinhalese in the South (not to mention baby elephants), when they think they can get away with it. If in the South power wielders feel free to abduct and kill until the media and the public intervene, what could not happen in the isolated Northern camps, to unfree Tamils, devoid of any rights, penned like animals, with no media to record their wrongs? The abductors of Nipuna Ramanayake and the killers of the two young men in Angulana are being brought to justice, because of incessant media criticisms and an outbreak of public protest.
But Southern media and Southern society are largely silent about the plight of the Northern displaced, because, where the Tamils are concerned, we seem to be thinking and acting sans a sense of proportion or a measure of humanity. Otherwise how can we not feel a sense of shame about the Northern internment camps or experience a measure of sympathy for the suffering of their inmates? Is our complaisance of rampant injustice and discrimination not a sign that we consent to a peace building premised not on acceptance and tolerance but on fear and force?
The local or international media does not have free access to the internment camps; consequently there are hardly any visuals or eye witness accounts of the human tragedy that is unfolding daily and hourly there, accounts which could have stirred our dormant collective conscience. Without such pictorial or verbal evidence, it is easy for most ordinary, decent Sinhalese to remain unmoved by the abomination that is being perpetrated in their name.
The Tamils outside the camps are too cowed to protest about the plight of their brethren since any such protest is likely to be labelled ‘terrorist’ and treated accordingly - imagine how an ‘Angulana type’ popular protest in Wellawatte would be reacted to by this administration. Given the Sinhala supremacist ethos currently dominant in state and society, being branded a Tiger is a permanent sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of every Tamil.
Two arguments are being used to justify the Northern internment camps. The ‘humanitarian’ argument is that the inmates cannot return to their villages until the de-mining process is complete. This argument does not hold water, as these people have been living in their villages, amidst the land mines, for a long time. Most of them would know where the land mines are and how to avoid them. In any case, the solution is to give the displaced a choice – so that those who want to return can do so, while those who are willing to wait for the de-mining to be complete can stay in the camps (plus permit those who can, to go to friends and relatives outside the camps).
Had such a choice been given, the camps would have truly become the welfare villages the state claims them to be, rather than the open prisons they actually are. The second, ‘national security’ argument is that the displaced have to be kept in camps until the Tigers hiding amidst them can be weeded out. To justify the incarceration of the innocent to catch the guilty, without even the lame excuse of an ongoing war, is an abhorrent act which has no place in a democracy or amongst civilised people, especially in the 21st Century. It violates the very essence of proportionality; it is as extreme as any Tiger crime. Injustices such as these breed resentment and hatred and pave the way for even bloodier conflicts.
As citizens of the de facto Tiger state, Tamils of Killinochchi and Mulaitivu had literally lived in the belly of the beast. They knew the brutal and oppressive reality of Eelam as the Diaspora or even the Colombo Tamils never could. With a little humanity, a little decency, they could have been turned into the most staunch bulwark against the rejuvenation of the LTTE or of Tamil separatism. Instead, we are treating them as enemy aliens, miring them in wretchedness and despair, thereby making them forget the past brutalities of the LTTE. What is being undermined in the Northern internment camps is not Tamil separatism but the idea and the hope of a common Sri Lankan future.
The Southern Dimension
Workers in several key areas, especially the CEB and the Colombo Port, are threatening trade union actions to win their demands, including promised pay hikes. The government has responded with an unequivocal no, saying that wage hikes for the public sector are impossible in 2010, given the high costs of war and the global economic crisis. Will the Sinhalese understand that there cannot be an economic peace dividend for the South without a political peace dividend for the North? If the North is to be treated as occupied territory, if hundreds of thousands of the Northern Tamils are to be kept imprisoned, resources that could have been spent on alleviating the economic burden of Southern masses will have to be spent on subduing the Northern masses. Without demilitarisation and democratisation in the North, there cannot be higher wages or lower prices, better working or living conditions in the South
The regime will need to stoke Sinhala fears about Tiger revival and Tamil expansionism in order to justify not only the treatment of Tamils as ‘Untermenschen’ but also to explain away the expansion of the armed forces and gargantuan military spending, in peace time. Consequently the threat posed by Tiger remnants here and abroad will have to be magnified; and political demands by Tamils for more devolution will have to be depicted as manifestations of separatism, and treated with corresponding harshness. The hair raising discovery by the Colombo Crimes Division (CCD) of an explosive laden van, about to be sent to Colombo on a suicide mission, was dismissed as ‘suspicious and questionable’ less than 24 hours later by the DIG of the Northern Province (and former STF Commandant) Nimal Lewke (incidentally the CCD arrested the van but released its driver!).
Last week, the newly appointed police spokesman was busy, revealing details about a plot to assassinate the Defense Secretary, declaring the reactivation of units, divisions and bureaus established to counter terrorism and related intelligence’ deactivated after the crushing of the LTTE… Are the Tigers, like Lazarus, coming to life miraculously, just three months after they were pronounced conclusively dead? Or is Sri Lanka about to experience her own version of ‘discovery of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)’ (augmented by a new ‘Naxalite Plot’), in time for the parliamentary polls. Parliamentary polls from which the ruling family is expecting a two thirds majority, so that a Rajapakse Constitution can usher in a Rajapakse era. [Courtesy: The Island]
"You who live safe,
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man…" - Primo Levi (If this is a Man)
The next cycle of the ‘Tamil problem’ has commenced unseen and unheeded, in the rain clogged internment camps up North.
The timing of the monsoon season was no secret, and yet hardly a thought was given by the authorities to its all too predictable consequences. The monsoons have barely begun and already most of the camps are deluged by rain water, placing every basic facility, from cooking to sanitation, beyond the reach of their wretched inmates.
The seasonal rains will cause floods in many parts of Sri Lanka; but unlike other affected citizens, the more than 250,000 Tamils in the Northern ‘welfare villages’ cannot leave their inundated places of residence for shelter and dry ground. Imprisoned by barbed wire fences and gun toting soldiers, the IDPs have no choice but to bear this latest horror just as they have borne every other calamity, with sullen, festering silence.
If the rains flooded the camps holding two hundred and fifty thousand Sinhala Buddhists imprisoned, depriving them of every basic facility, the South would not have ignored their suffering and the Southern media would not have permitted the government to deny their plight. Our collective silence in the face of the unfolding tragedy in the North indicates a disturbing inability to treat Tamils as fellow human beings, let alone citizens with equal rights.
Our collective failure to condemn this massive injustice that is being perpetrated in our name demonstrates that the mindset which enabled the Black July, not so much the evil of an active minority as the indifference of a silent majority, is alive and well in the South. We know and yet we chose to ignore. To paraphrase Bruno Bettelheim, ‘when hundreds of thousands are incarcerated, none but a guileless child remains innocent. We are all tainted by it. The rest of us are not innocent, but intent on keeping ourselves ignorant’.
The regime knows that the monsoons have turned the camps into a watery hell, and yet, it does nothing. Rhetorical flourishes apart, the Rajapakse administration never concerned itself with the safety and wellbeing of civilian Tamils in the North and the East during the war. When an occasional concession was made (such as ceasing/limiting the use of bombing and shelling during the last phase of the war), it was in response to Indian or international pressure. With the conclusive defeat of the LTTE, India and the world have lost whatever capacity they previously had to nudge the Rajapakses away from more extreme measures.
Armed with a near total sense of impunity, the regime is treating Tamils with a degree of injustice that was inconceivable just one year ago. After all, the thought of the entire population of Killinochchi and Mulaitivu districts being imprisoned in barbed wire enclosures, after the war, was unthinkable - until it became a fait accompli. Today it is an integral part of reality which many ignore, some justify and only a few oppose. The unthinkable has become normal with a degree of rapidity and a measure of completeness which bodes ill for the future. (The pledge to resettle the incarcerated IDPs in 180 days will meet the same fate as the promise to implement the 13th amendment in full as soon as possible and to explore ways of devolving even more power, made by President Rajapakse to the then Indian Foreign Minister, on January 27th this year - according to a statement tabled in Sri Lankan parliament by Deputy Foreign Minister, Hussein Bhaila).
Normalising Discrimination
The Northern internment camps are a leitmotiv of the Rajapakse approach to peace, just as child soldiers and suicide bombers were a leitmotiv of the Tiger approach to ‘national liberation’. The fact that almost the entire population of Killinochchi and Mullaitivu districts is being forcibly kept in open prisons is not a mere detail to be overlooked or brushed aside. It is an essential element, a formative factor of post-war Sri Lanka. The Northern camps would have been not just impossible but also inconceivable, without the retrogressive paradigmatic shift towards a Sinhala supremacist ethos. If any Tamil can be a Tiger, it makes sense to incarcerate every resident of those Northern districts once under LTTE control, in order to capture a few thousand Tigers.
If most Tamils are prone to Tiger sympathies, trying to win them over makes no sense; it is better to treat them with suspicion and cow them into obedience. An administration which sees a Tiger in almost any Tamil is likely to eschew a political solution to the ethnic problem (or even development) in favour of more soldiers and more weapons, as the best path to peace and stability. The statement by the Chief of Defence Staff, General Sarath Fonseka that the number of security forces personnel deployed in the Jaffna peninsula has been more than doubled from 15.000 to 35,000, post-war, makes sense in this politico-psychological context, as does the declaration by the Defence Secretary that military expenditure for 2010 will remain at 2009 levels (US$1.6 billion). The peace envisioned by the regime is not a peace based on consent but on force.
The country had a glimpse of what abusive authorities do to free Sinhalese in the South (not to mention baby elephants), when they think they can get away with it. If in the South power wielders feel free to abduct and kill until the media and the public intervene, what could not happen in the isolated Northern camps, to unfree Tamils, devoid of any rights, penned like animals, with no media to record their wrongs? The abductors of Nipuna Ramanayake and the killers of the two young men in Angulana are being brought to justice, because of incessant media criticisms and an outbreak of public protest.
But Southern media and Southern society are largely silent about the plight of the Northern displaced, because, where the Tamils are concerned, we seem to be thinking and acting sans a sense of proportion or a measure of humanity. Otherwise how can we not feel a sense of shame about the Northern internment camps or experience a measure of sympathy for the suffering of their inmates? Is our complaisance of rampant injustice and discrimination not a sign that we consent to a peace building premised not on acceptance and tolerance but on fear and force?
The local or international media does not have free access to the internment camps; consequently there are hardly any visuals or eye witness accounts of the human tragedy that is unfolding daily and hourly there, accounts which could have stirred our dormant collective conscience. Without such pictorial or verbal evidence, it is easy for most ordinary, decent Sinhalese to remain unmoved by the abomination that is being perpetrated in their name.
The Tamils outside the camps are too cowed to protest about the plight of their brethren since any such protest is likely to be labelled ‘terrorist’ and treated accordingly - imagine how an ‘Angulana type’ popular protest in Wellawatte would be reacted to by this administration. Given the Sinhala supremacist ethos currently dominant in state and society, being branded a Tiger is a permanent sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of every Tamil.
Two arguments are being used to justify the Northern internment camps. The ‘humanitarian’ argument is that the inmates cannot return to their villages until the de-mining process is complete. This argument does not hold water, as these people have been living in their villages, amidst the land mines, for a long time. Most of them would know where the land mines are and how to avoid them. In any case, the solution is to give the displaced a choice – so that those who want to return can do so, while those who are willing to wait for the de-mining to be complete can stay in the camps (plus permit those who can, to go to friends and relatives outside the camps).
Had such a choice been given, the camps would have truly become the welfare villages the state claims them to be, rather than the open prisons they actually are. The second, ‘national security’ argument is that the displaced have to be kept in camps until the Tigers hiding amidst them can be weeded out. To justify the incarceration of the innocent to catch the guilty, without even the lame excuse of an ongoing war, is an abhorrent act which has no place in a democracy or amongst civilised people, especially in the 21st Century. It violates the very essence of proportionality; it is as extreme as any Tiger crime. Injustices such as these breed resentment and hatred and pave the way for even bloodier conflicts.
As citizens of the de facto Tiger state, Tamils of Killinochchi and Mulaitivu had literally lived in the belly of the beast. They knew the brutal and oppressive reality of Eelam as the Diaspora or even the Colombo Tamils never could. With a little humanity, a little decency, they could have been turned into the most staunch bulwark against the rejuvenation of the LTTE or of Tamil separatism. Instead, we are treating them as enemy aliens, miring them in wretchedness and despair, thereby making them forget the past brutalities of the LTTE. What is being undermined in the Northern internment camps is not Tamil separatism but the idea and the hope of a common Sri Lankan future.
The Southern Dimension
Workers in several key areas, especially the CEB and the Colombo Port, are threatening trade union actions to win their demands, including promised pay hikes. The government has responded with an unequivocal no, saying that wage hikes for the public sector are impossible in 2010, given the high costs of war and the global economic crisis. Will the Sinhalese understand that there cannot be an economic peace dividend for the South without a political peace dividend for the North? If the North is to be treated as occupied territory, if hundreds of thousands of the Northern Tamils are to be kept imprisoned, resources that could have been spent on alleviating the economic burden of Southern masses will have to be spent on subduing the Northern masses. Without demilitarisation and democratisation in the North, there cannot be higher wages or lower prices, better working or living conditions in the South
The regime will need to stoke Sinhala fears about Tiger revival and Tamil expansionism in order to justify not only the treatment of Tamils as ‘Untermenschen’ but also to explain away the expansion of the armed forces and gargantuan military spending, in peace time. Consequently the threat posed by Tiger remnants here and abroad will have to be magnified; and political demands by Tamils for more devolution will have to be depicted as manifestations of separatism, and treated with corresponding harshness. The hair raising discovery by the Colombo Crimes Division (CCD) of an explosive laden van, about to be sent to Colombo on a suicide mission, was dismissed as ‘suspicious and questionable’ less than 24 hours later by the DIG of the Northern Province (and former STF Commandant) Nimal Lewke (incidentally the CCD arrested the van but released its driver!).
Last week, the newly appointed police spokesman was busy, revealing details about a plot to assassinate the Defense Secretary, declaring the reactivation of units, divisions and bureaus established to counter terrorism and related intelligence’ deactivated after the crushing of the LTTE… Are the Tigers, like Lazarus, coming to life miraculously, just three months after they were pronounced conclusively dead? Or is Sri Lanka about to experience her own version of ‘discovery of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)’ (augmented by a new ‘Naxalite Plot’), in time for the parliamentary polls. Parliamentary polls from which the ruling family is expecting a two thirds majority, so that a Rajapakse Constitution can usher in a Rajapakse era. [Courtesy: The Island]
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