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Death sentence mandatory on KP and Karuna: any accord is illegal: President, Defense Secretary, AG punishable -legal experts

(Lanka-e-News, 15,Feb.2010, 10.50AM)

No matter what accord or settlement pact is entered into with K P alias Kumaran Pathmanathan the LTTE chief arms supplier and its leader after Prabhakaran’s death, and LTTE arms leader Karuna is unlawful under the Penal code of Sri Lanka, as pinpointed by legal experts of the country.

The five provisions on treason against the State of the criminal procedure code No.15 of 1979, make it very clear that KP and Karuna who had committed treason shall compulsorily be punished with death sentence, and no pact of settlement or accord can be entered into with them.
Hereunder are the provisions..

114)
Warring against or attempting to or aiding and abetting the crime of rebelling against a legally elected Govt. – no warrants necessary for arrests ; unbailable; no settlement pacts or accords allowable.

115 )
Conspiring against a legally elected Govt. – the suspect is liable to a punishment of 20 years in jail and a fine.

116)
Building of arms against a legally elected Govt.- no warrant is necessary to arrest the suspect ; no bail can be granted ; no accord can be reached. He is liable to a 20 year jail sentence and confiscation of property.

117)
Obstructing the legally elected Govt. to fight a war or undermining its strategies by wrongful operations and engagements – a 10 year jail sentence and a fine can be imposed on such a suspect

120)
Inciting hatred and rebellion or attempting to do so against a legally elected Govt.-
The laws therefore very clearly lay down that an accord cannot be entered into with such individuals or granted any relief. The only exception is when that individual is below the age of 16 years or she is pregnant. If the suspect is below 16 years old, the President can keep him in custody for any length of time and his property can be confiscated. If she is a pregnant woman, she can be jailed for life and properties confiscated. In all other cases, death sentence and/ or a jail sentence over ten years not exceeding 20 years together with confiscation of assets and properties can be imposed.

Accordingly, entering into an accord with KP and Karuna are a gross violation of the provisions of the penal code of SL. As they are not below the age of 16 and they cannot claim themselves as pregnant women, they shall compulsorily be liable to death sentence or 20 years imprisonment with confiscation of all assets and properties.

Legal experts and luminaries point out that in the circumstances, by entering into an accord with K P and Karuna is a gross flagrant violation of the basic and fundamental laws. Hence, the President, the defense Secretary and the Attorney General (AG) are liable for punishment.

Moreover,based on the statement made by KP to the newspapers he has confessed to his committing the crimes, which alone is sufficient to institute legal action against him, the experts emphasize.

Commemorative lecture on second death anniversary of Lasantha Wickrematunge
16 Feb, 2011 Groundviews Colombo, Features, Human Rights, Media and Communications, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, Post-War

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter” ~ Martin Luther King Jr, (15 January 1929 ~ 4 April 1968), (Activist, Clergyman, and prominent leader in African ~ American Civil rights movement)
A commemorative lecture to mark the second death anniversary of Sunday leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunge was held today. This is the first commemorative lecture to pay tribute to Late Lasantha Wickrematunge, who was killed on 8th of January 2009 in Ratmalana, suburb of Colombo.
Christopher Warren, former President of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) delivered the key note address titled ~ “Role of Media in Post-War Democratization”. Candles were lit around the cement monument of pen with a human hollow to pay tribute to the journalists who sacrificed their lives. The monument stands on a barrel painted in white. The monument was created by the Vibhavi Academy of Fine Arts (VAFA).
A large number of human rights activists, diplomats, foreign and local journalists, politicians, artistes and members of the civil society attended today’s commemorative lecture. The event was organized by the Free Media Movement.

Above text and all photos by DushiYanthini Kanagasabapathipillai, a regular contributor to Groundviews.

Speech by Christopher Warren, immediate past President, International Federation of Journalists, and Federal Secretary, Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance to the Lasantha Wickrematunge commemoration, Colombo, Sri Lanka, February 15, 2011.

These last few weeks have been exhilarating for those of us who believe in democracy, human rights and freedom of speech and the press.

First Tunisia and now Egypt have embarked on the exciting, tumultuous journey to free and democratic societies. There can be no doubt that the most difficult part of that journey is still to come and those countries – and the dominos that will inevitably follow them – will require all the support possible from the international community of friends and supporters of democracy.
And there can be no doubt that there will be stumbles and disappointments along the way. But there can be no doubt that the end result will be a freer, more open – more normal – society.
The events in north Africa are exhilarating not just for their own sake. They are a beacon to the world.

Partly this is due to the significance of Egypt as a central player in Africa and the middle East. It will force every country in the region to confront this question: If Egypt, why not us?
But it is significant beyond its own borders and its own region. It is significant because it marks the renewal of the global march to democracy and human rights.

Over the past decade, this march has stumbled due to two influences. First, the ill-named Global War on Terror came to justify restrictions on human rights in the name of security, to encourage the democratic world to compromise with authoritarian regimes in the name of fighting terror and conflated the spread of democracy with the use of armed force in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These restrictions came although as that great journalist Benjamin Franklin warned us over two centuries ago: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Yet the sacrifices made in traditional democracies acted not only to set back human rights in those countries. It sent a message to authoritarian regimes around the world that human rights was no longer the central concern that it should be for all democratic nations.

At the same time, the economic growth of China within the strict authoritarian rule of the Communist Party gave new life to the chimera beloved of leaders with authoritarian tendencies everywhere that economic growth occurs best when coupled with strong man rule despite the corruption that goes with it.

Yet we know from within our own region how false that is. All authoritarian regimes sooner or later hit a wall of economic growth that only genuine democracies can break through. We saw it in Korea and Taiwan in 1988 and in Indonesia in 1998. In all those cases, the crisis of authoritarianism could only be resolved through democratization.

And now, the risings in Tunisia and Egypt have again put a full stop to both these lies. They reopen the understanding that you can only fight terror through democracy and only a democracy built on respect for human rights can guarantee a strong and vibrant economy that eliminates corruption.

There’s a further development that makes the examples of Tunisia and Egypt so exciting. They’ve been driven by the same groups that have been working for democracy throughout the world – human rights and press freedom NGOs, independent trade unions and working journalists.

They have not been driven by the traditional political or oppositional groups but from broad based networks reflecting the frustrations of the people.
For me – as I suspect it would have been for Lasantha — the example of journalists is particularly exciting.

We need to be honest – many journalists do well out of authoritarian regimes, particularly in cases like Egypt where so much of the media is state-owned. They get the perks of status and public recognition. They get to pontificate on national television about the inevitability of strong man rule. They get to hobnob with political heavyweights and get invited to drinks with the president. They are relatively well paid. Too many of our colleagues fall into the trap of comfort and compromise.

Yet, as in case after case of democratic revolution around the world, individual working journalists – particularly the rising generation — have rushed to place themselves at the centre of the north African risings.
Even within the state-owned media, journalists have been fighting for – and winning — a free media, for the right to report in the interests of the people, not of the State and the ruling elite. Some have walked out, rather than compromise their journalist principles.

And now we are seeing their battles paying off with the likely break-up and democratization of State-owned media built on the principles of independent public service broadcasting and publishing and the strengthening of independent and private media.

It will be these reforms, more than any others, that will ensure that Egyptian and Tunisian democracy continues to surge forward. And it is these battles that must lie at the heart of the campaigning commitment of journalist communities.

It is clear from this, that there are many lessons to be learnt from north Africa, not least here in Sri Lanka.
As I said, in most of the world, democracy has marked time over the past decade.

Would that were the case here in Sri Lanka. Instead it has gone backwards. And the murder of Sivaram in 2005, of Lasantha Wickrematunge two years ago, the trial of Tissa, Jesiharan and Valamarty, the effective exiling of friends like Poddala, Sanath and Sunanda, and the disappearance of Prageeth Eknaligoda last year all stand as chilling monuments to that deterioration.
Each of these marked a different phase of that deterioration. The murder of Sivaram and the treason trials of Tissa, Jesiharan and Valamarthy all in their own way marked a common goal of both the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE – the elimination of any independent, questioning space in the Tamil community.

The bashing of Poddala Jayantha and others and forcing into exile so many other friends marked the attempt to eliminate the sort of independent network of journalists, human rights NGOs and independent unions in the media that, as Egypt and Tunisia shows, can be so challenging to an increasingly authoritarian ruling elite.
And the murder of Lasantha and the subsequent disappearance of Prageeth marked the attempt to eliminate a questioning and challenging media. I doubt there is a journalist in the country that didn’t hear and understand the message that these two events sent.

Lasantha’s powerful message from the grave And Then They Came for Me indicates how well he understood that the attacks on free and independent journalism did not come in a vacuum – they came as part of a concerted push against democracy and human rights.
He also well understood that, in being attacked, he was not being singled out. As he said, he did not travel the journey alone: “Fellow journalists in other branches of the media walked with me: most of them are now dead, imprisoned without trial or exiled in far-off lands.”

And yet, though his murder was only one of many, his standing in our craft meant his killing was more shocking than most. Here was one of this country’s most senior journalists, a fiercely independent editor of one of its leading independent papers, publisher of critical investigative exposes of corruption and wrong doing.
And yet, if his standing could not protect him, how should the rest of the craft stand up?

And yet journalists do. And that’s because, as the actions of many of our colleagues in north Africa have reminded us this year, free and independent journalism can only exist in a free and democratic society built on human rights.

We are like fish who cannot live without the sea of freedom of expression surrounding us.
An independent Sri Lanka is about the same age as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, so it is no surprise that the challenge of human rights has been intertwined in the history of an independent Sri Lanka from the very beginning.

It has been a history punctuated with human rights abuses from the denial of citizenship to the upcountry Tamils in its very early days through to the murder of Lasantha and the disappearance of Prageeth. It has included some of the world’s most terrible events from the anti-Tamil Colombo pogrom in 1983 to the presentation of suicide bombings as the LTTE’s most enduring gift to the world

Balancing these human rights abuses have been an enduring democracy, flawed and inadequate as it has been at times. A simulacrum of an independent judiciary has survived. Civil society has grown.

What intertwines human rights so deeply in the history of Sri Lanka is not that it has been the worst of societies, any more than it has been the best. It is that from the very beginning of the country’s independence, human rights have always been the central contested terrain of struggle.

I have long believed that the history of Sri Lanka can only really be written and understood as a history of the struggle for human rights.
With the murder of Lasantha, the disappearance of Prageeth, freedom of expression has become the centre of the struggle because you cannot have a society founded on human rights without the right of freedom of expression. And, you cannot have freedom of expression without a society founded on human rights.

Freedom of expression underpins some other rights directly – the right to practice your religion freely, the right to peaceful assembly as well as freedom of speech or, narrowest of all, freedom of the media. None of these rights exists without the right to freely express
It’s integral to the rights of women, minority groups and disadvantaged groups. They cannot be empowered without being empowered through their own freedom to express themselves. That’s why I have no truck with those who argue that freedom of expression is marginal to the struggles of the disadvantaged. Those struggles cannot even have the words to express themselves if they are not empowered to speak.

It’s bundled up in the right to a fair trial – part of a fair trial is to be tried in the open.
And it underpins all other rights – rights of security, rights against arbitrary arrest, rights to citizenship, rights against torture because it – along with an independent judiciary – is the means for enforcing these rights. It’s the means for exposing abuse and by exposing end them
Freedom of expression is the catalyst that enables every other right to be freely exercised.

While freedom of the press is really only a subset of the broader right of freedom expression, traditionally, it’s been through journalists like Lasantha and Prageeth bravely exercising our craft here in Sri Lanka that the struggle for human rights has been reported and made known.
And that’s why they and so many other journalists have become the target.

Like every other person, a journalist has a right against abduction, against illegal imprisonment, against torture and against murder. Yet now, for reporting, for analyzing, for questioning, for – in short – doing their job, too many journalists have found themselves in the vortex of spiraling human rights abuse in Sri Lanka.
And so Lasantha was murdered and Prageeth disappeared.
It is easy in this environment to think things will never get better.
But Tunisia and Egypt show the decade of marking time is over.

Yet again, authoritarian rule has failed the people – even the sort of soft authoritarianism that uses the veneer of elections to conceal the abuse of human rights.
And it will be up to journalists to make a difference – but it will not be up to us alone. We need to learn the lessons that our friends and colleagues in Tunisia and Egypt have taught us all over again.

First, we cannot compromise our craft. Journalism in the service of an authoritarian state is not journalism at all. It is merely words on a page or voices in the airwaves. Journalism must stand, as it always has, for respect for the truth and respect for the public’s right to know.
Second, we must continue to stand together. The solidarity of the organized media community in Sri Lanka – reflected in the coming together of the six organizations – is a model for the island. The media community – the journalists community — is the only community that appears to be capable of transcending the divisions that cause so much havoc in Sri Lanka.
I know that solidarity has been tested over the past two or so years. It is understandable that under the unbearable pressure that journalists have been under, that tensions have broken out. We all know some friends and colleagues have felt abandoned as a result.
Yet that support and solidarity has largely endured and made bearable the pressures that journalists have faced. And now, it lays the basis for renewing the struggle for a genuinely free and democratic media.

And third, emerging information technologies are shattering the monopoly we used to enjoy as the sole conduit of information to our communities.
Now, newspapers, radio, tv are no longer the sole source of information. Social media like Twitter and Face book and Web 2.0 like bloggers, citizen journalists and news web sites all add immeasurably to the mix, although none of them are a substitute for independent journalism. We can see the challenge they pose to elites with the recent burning of Lanka eNews.
But they do more than simply add to the total volume of information.
The potential of these technologies shatters the paradigm that successive Sri Lankan governments have followed. They cannot shut off the faucet of news and information by political appointments to run state-owned media, pressuring advertisers to abandon independent media and threatening, abusing and murdering journalists.
Finally, we need to remember that the risings in Tunisia and Egypt were driven as much by the economic failings of authoritarian rule – and this is the blow it strikes against the so called “China model”.

The people in Tahrir Square in Cairo know what every economist knows: authoritarian rule – soft or hard – inevitably acts to conceal corruption and corruption is the major impediment to genuine economic growth and decent living standards for ordinary people.
Rising prices, unemployment and underemployment, corruption – only a democracy built on human rights can confront these challenges.
Despite all this, when it comes to human rights and freedom of expression, the Sri Lankan government is like a general fighting the last war, using the tactics that worked so well in the 1980s and at a loss to understand why they do not work this time around.
And as they have struggled to understand, the government and their military and paramilitary allies, lashed out ever more wildly and ever more journalists fell victim to their failure to understand the world in which we all live.

And, in the short term, they prevailed.
But now, the challenge for us as journalists, as believers in democracy and human rights, is to seize the historic turning that north Africa has illuminated.
We have to reassert the fundamental right of all the peoples of the world and of Sri Lanka. The right to have real meaning put into democratic structures and to have them leavened with human rights, including the right to safety and the right to freedom of expression.

Like Sri Lanka, my country is an island. But as the global march of democracy and human rights resumes, no countries will be islands for long.

Freedom of Expression Key to Democracy and Human Rights
Lasantha Wickrematunge Commemoration Lecture
2011-02-16

Christopher Warren, immediate past President, International Federation of Journalists, and Federal Secretary, Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance to the Lasantha Wickrematunge commemoration, Colombo, Sri Lanka, February 15, 2011.
These last few weeks have been exhilarating for those of us who believe in democracy, human rights, freedom of speech and the press.
First Tunisia and now Egypt have embarked on the exciting, tumultuous journey to free and democratic societies. There can be no doubt that the most difficult part of that journey is still to come and those countries – and the dominos that will inevitably follow them – will require all the support possible from the international community of friends and supporters of democracy.

And there can be no doubt that there will be stumbles and disappointments along the way. But there can be no doubt that the end result will be a freer, more open – more normal – society.
The events in north Africa are exhilarating not just for their own sake. They are a beacon to the world.
Partly this is due to the significance of Egypt as a central player in Africa and the middle East. It will force every country in the region to confront this question: If Egypt, why not us?
But it is significant beyond its own borders and its own region. It is significant because it marks the renewal of the global march to democracy and human rights.
Over the past decade, this march has stumbled due to two influences. First, the ill-named Global War on Terror came to justify restrictions on human rights in the name of security, to encourage the democratic world to compromise with authoritarian regimes in the name of fighting terror and conflated the spread of democracy with the use of armed force in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These restrictions came although as that great journalist Benjamin Franklin warned us over two centuries ago: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Yet the sacrifices made in traditional democracies acted not only to set back human rights in those countries. It sent a message to authoritarian regimes around the world that human rights was no longer the central concern that it should be for all democratic nations.

At the same time, the economic growth of China within the strict authoritarian rule of the Communist Party gave new life to the chimera beloved of leaders with authoritarian tendencies everywhere that economic growth occurs best when coupled with strong man rule despite the corruption that goes with it.
Yet we know from within our own region how false that is. All authoritarian regimes sooner or later hit a wall of economic growth that only genuine democracies can break through. We saw it in Korea and Taiwan in 1988 and in Indonesia in 1998. In all those cases, the crisis of authoritarianism could only be resolved through democratisation.

And now, the risings in Tunisia and Egypt have again put a full stop to both these lies. They reopen the understanding that you can only fight terror through democracy and only a democracy built on respect for human rights can guarantee a strong and vibrant economy that eliminates corruption.
There’s a further development that makes the examples of Tunisia and Egypt so exciting. They’ve been driven by the same groups that have been working for democracy throughout the world – human rights and press freedom NGOs, independent trade unions and working journalists.
They have not been driven by the traditional political or oppositional groups but from broad based networks reflecting the frustrations of the people.
For me – as I suspect it would have been for Lasantha - the example of journalists is particularly exciting.

We need to be honest – many journalists do well out of authoritarian regimes, particularly in cases like Egypt where so much of the media is state-owned. They get the perks of status and public recognition. They get to pontificate on national television about the inevitability of strong man rule. They get to hobnob with political heavyweights and get invited to drinks with the president. They are relatively well paid. Too many of our colleagues fall into the trap of comfort and compromise.
Yet, as in case after case of democratic revolution around the world, individual working journalists – particularly the rising generation - have rushed to place themselves at the centre of the north African risings.

Even within the state-owned media, journalists have been fighting for – and winning - a free media, for the right to report in the interests of the people, not of the State and the ruling elite. Some have walked out, rather than compromise their journalist principles.
And now we are seeing their battles paying off with the likely break-up and democratisation of State-owned media built on the principles of independent public service broadcasting and publishing and the strengthening of independent and private media.

It will be these reforms, more than any others, that will ensure that Egyptian and Tunisian democracy continues to surge forward. And it is these battles that must lie at the heart of the campaigning commitment of journalist communities.
It is clear from this, that there are many lessons to be learnt from north Africa, not least here in Sri Lanka.
As I said, in most of the world, democracy has marked time over the past decade.

Would that were the case here in Sri Lanka. Instead it has gone backwards. And the murder of Sivaram in 2005, of Lasantha Wickrematunge two years ago, the trial of Tissa, Jesiharan and Valamarty, the effective exiling of friends like Poddala, Sanath and Sunanda, and the disappearance of Prageeth Eknaligoda last year all stand as chilling monuments to that deterioration.
Each of these marked a different phase of that deterioration. The murder of Sivaram and the treason trials of Tissa, Jesiharan and Valamarthy all in their own way marked a common goal of both the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE – the elimination of any independent, questioning space in the Tamil community.

The bashing of Poddala Jayantha and others and forcing into exile so many other friends marked the attempt to eliminate the sort of independent network of journalists, human rights NGOs and independent unions in the media that, as Egypt and Tunisia shows, can be so challenging to an increasingly authoritarian ruling elite.
And the murder of Lasantha and the subsequent disappearance of Prageeth marked the attempt to eliminate a questioning and challenging media. I doubt there is a journalist in the country that didn’t hear and understand the message that these two events sent.

Lasantha’s powerful message from the grave And Then They Came for Me indicates how well he understood that the attacks on free and independent journalism did not come in a vacuum – they came as part of a concerted push against democracy and human rights.

He also well understood that, in being attacked, he was not being singled out. As he said, he did not travel the journey alone: “Fellow journalists in other branches of the media walked with me: most of them are now dead, imprisoned without trial or exiled in far-off lands.”
And yet, though his murder was only one of many, his standing in our craft meant his killing was more shocking than most. Here was one of this country’s most senior journalists, a fiercely independent editor of one of its leading independent papers, publisher of critical investigative exposes of corruption and wrong doing.

And yet, if his standing could not protect him, how should the rest of the craft stand up?
And yet journalists do. And that’s because, as the actions of many of our colleagues in north Africa have reminded us this year, free and independent journalism can only exist in a free and democratic society built on human rights.

We are like fish who cannot live without the sea of freedom of expression surrounding us.
An independent Sri Lanka is about the same age as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, so it is no surprise that the challenge of human rights has been intertwined in the history of an independent Sri Lanka from the very beginning.

It has been a history punctuated with human rights abuses from the denial of citizenship to the upcountry Tamils in its very early days through to the murder of Lasantha and the disappearance of Prageeth. It has included some of the world’s most terrible events from the anti-Tamil Colombo pogrom in 1983 to the presentation of suicide bombings as the LTTE’s most enduring gift to the world Balancing these human rights abuses have been an enduring democracy, flawed and inadequate as it has been at times. A simulacrum of an independent judiciary has survived. Civil society has grown.

What intertwines human rights so deeply in the history of Sri Lanka is not that it has been the worst of societies, any more than it has been the best. It is that from the very beginning of the country’s independence, human rights have always been the central contested terrain of struggle.
I have long believed that the history of Sri Lanka can only really be written and understood as a history of the struggle for human rights.
With the murder of Lasantha, the disappearance of Prageeth, freedom of expression has become the centre of the struggle because you cannot have a society founded on human rights without the right of freedom of expression. And, you cannot have freedom of expression without a society founded on human rights.

Freedom of expression underpins some other rights directly – the right to practice your religion freely, the right to peaceful assembly as well as freedom of speech or, narrowest of all, freedom of the media. None of these rights exists without the right to freely express.
It’s integral to the rights of women, minority groups and disadvantaged groups. They cannot be empowered without being empowered through their own freedom to express themselves. That’s why I have no truck with those who argue that freedom of expression is marginal to the struggles of the disadvantaged. Those struggles cannot even have the words to express themselves if they are not empowered to speak.

It’s bundled up in the right to a fair trial – part of a fair trial is to be tried in the open.
And it underpins all other rights – rights of security, rights against arbitrary arrest, rights to citizenship, rights against torture because it – along with an independent judiciary – is the means for enforcing these rights. It’s the means for exposing abuse and by exposing end them
Freedom of expression is the catalyst that enables every other right to be freely exercised.

While freedom of the press is really only a subset of the broader right of freedom expression, traditionally, it’s been through journalists like Lasantha and Prageeth bravely exercising our craft here in Sri Lanka that the struggle for human rights has been reported and made known.
And that’s why they and so many other journalists have become the target.

Like every other person, a journalist has a right against abduction, against illegal imprisonment, against torture and against murder. Yet now, for reporting, for analysing, for questioning, for – in short – doing their job, too many journalists have found themselves in the vortex of spiralling human rights abuse in Sri Lanka.
And so Lasantha was murdered and Prageeth disappeared.
It is easy in this environment to think things will never get better.
But Tunisia and Egypt show the decade of marking time is over.

Yet again, authoritarian rule has failed the people – even the sort of soft authoritarianism that uses the veneer of elections to conceal the abuse of human rights.
And it will be up to journalists to make a difference – but it will not be up to us alone. We need to learn the lessons that our friends and colleagues in Tunisia and Egypt have taught us all over again.

First, we cannot compromise our craft. Journalism in the service of an authoritarian state is not journalism at all. It is merely words on a page or voices in the airwaves. Journalism must stand, as it always has, for respect for the truth and respect for the public’s right to know.
Second, we must continue to stand together. The solidarity of the organised media community in Sri Lanka – reflected in the coming together of the six organisations – is a model for the island. The media community – the journalists community - is the only community that appears to be capable of transcending the divisions that cause so much havoc in Sri Lanka.
I know that solidarity has been tested over the past two or so years. It is understandable that under the unbearable pressure that journalists have been under, that tensions have broken out. We all know some friends and colleagues have felt abandoned as a result.
Yet that support and solidarity has largely endured and made bearable the pressures that journalists have faced. And now, it lays the basis for renewing the struggle for a genuinely free and democratic media.

And third, emerging information technologies are shattering the monopoly we used to enjoy as the sole conduit of information to our communities.
Now, newspapers, radio and TV are no longer the sole source of information. Social media like Twitter and Facebook and Web 2.0 like bloggers, citizen journalists and news web sites all add immeasurably to the mix, although none of them are a substitute for independent journalism. We can see the challenge they pose to elites with the recent burning of LankaENews.
But they do more than simply add to the total volume of information.
The potential of these technologies shatters the paradigm that successive Sri Lankan governments have followed. They cannot shut off the faucet of news and information by political appointments to run state-owned media, pressuring advertisers to abandon independent media and threatening, abusing and murdering journalists.
Finally, we need to remember that the risings in Tunisia and Egypt were driven as much by the economic failings of authoritarian rule – and this is the blow it strikes against the so called “China model”.

The people in Tahrir Square in Cairo know what every economist knows: authoritarian rule – soft or hard – inevitably acts to conceal corruption and corruption is the major impediment to genuine economic growth and decent living standards for ordinary people.
Rising prices, unemployment and underemployment, corruption – only a democracy built on human rights can confront these challenges.
Despite all this, when it comes to human rights and freedom of expression, the Sri Lankan government is like a general fighting the last war, using the tactics that worked so well in the 1980s and at a loss to understand why they do not work this time around.

And as they have struggled to understand, the government and their military and paramilitary allies, lashed out ever more wildly and ever more journalists fell victim to their failure to understand the world in which we all live.
And, in the short term, they prevailed.

But now, the challenge for us as journalists, as believers in democracy and human rights, is to seize the historic turning that north Africa has illuminated.
We have to reassert the fundamental right of all the peoples of the world and of Sri Lanka. The right to have real meaning put into democratic structures and to have them leavened with human rights, including the right to safety and the right to freedom of expression.

Like Sri Lanka, my country is an island. But as the global march of democracy and human rights resumes, no countries will be islands for long.

British MPs urge the Prime Minister to support an independent, international war crimes investigation in Sri Lanka


Today, 41 British MPs drawn from the three major parties at Westminster, have written to the British Prime Minister David Cameron urging him to add Britain’s support to calls for an independent, international inquiry into allegations of war crimes committed during Sri Lanka’s 25 year civil conflict (letter is attached). The MPs are all Members or Supporters of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils.

This is a major issue of concern for British parliamentarians, and follows credible evidence provided by the US State Department, the European Commission and International Crisis Group, as well as the findings of the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, that war crimes could have taken place in Sri Lanka. The MPs believe it is important for the future prospects of peace and reconciliation on the island that these allegations

are investigated in a robust and impartial fashion.
The timing of this letter is significant. It comes as the international community awaits publication of the report of the United Nations Advisory Panel, appointed by Ban Ki-Moon to advise him on the matter of war crimes accountability in Sri Lanka.
Vice Chair of the Group, Siobhain McDonagh MP, said:
“The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary have made welcome statements recently about the need for Sri Lanka to have a credible and independent way of addressing these allegations of violations human rights during the civil war. But this can only have credibility if it takes place under international auspices because serious concerns have been raised around the world about Sri Lanka’s previous efforts to investigate severe human rights abuses.
“If he supports the All Party Group in this way, the Prime Minister will be sending a powerful message to the United Nations Secretary General that Britain backs an independent, international war crimes inquiry. He would also send a powerful message to the people of Sri Lanka that Britain supports human rights, justice, reconciliation and peace on the island.”
The Full Text of the letter sent to the British Prime Minister and names of signatories are reproduced below:
Rt Hon David Cameron MP
The Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
London SW1
February 2011
Dear Prime Minister,

The need for an independent international investigation into war crimes in Sri Lanka
We are writing to urge you to use all the powers at your disposal to support calls for an independent international investigation into the alleged war crimes that occurred during Sri Lanka’s 25-year civil war. As you know, members of the Congress of the United States have already written to the Secretary of State there to ask her to call for such an investigation, and we should like the British Government to put its full weight behind this proposal.

In October 2009, the European Commission published a report on human rights in Sri Lanka since the war. It said “During the period covered by the investigation, there has been a high rate of unlawful killings in Sri Lanka, including killings carried out by the security forces, persons for whom the State is responsible and the police.” It added: “Extra-judicial killings were widespread and included political killings designed to suppress and deter the exercise of civil and political rights… Unlawful killings perpetrated by soldiers, police and paramilitary groups with ties to the Government, have been a persistent problem.”
In the same month, the US State Department listed numerous crimes that they believed required further investigation, including intentional bombing of civilian and humanitarian organisations, the use of child soldiers, extrajudicial abuse and detention of unarmed civilians and former combatants, the killing of captives or combatants seeking to surrender, and individual disappearances.

There is, therefore, certainly enough evidence to conclude that war crimes could have taken place in Sri Lanka, particularly towards the end of the civil war there, and we believe they can only be investigated effectively if investigations are carried out independently.
Along with many colleagues around the world, we believe that only an independent investigation can inspire confidence and achieve reconciliation. This is because, as Congress members noted, Sri Lanka’s past efforts to investigate severe human rights abuses have not been successful and inspire no confidence that new internal investigations will be credible. These concerns are supported by numerous reputable institutions around the world.
The International Crisis Group argues “An international inquiry into alleged crimes is essential given the absence of political will or capacity for genuine domestic investigations, the need for an accounting to address the grievances that drive conflict in Sri Lanka, and the potential of other governments adopting the Sri Lankan model of counter-insurgency in their own internal conflicts.”

Amnesty International has pointed out that there have already been 9 commissions of enquiry formed by the Government of Sri Lanka since 1991 to investigate human rights issues including disappearances. Amnesty has said they have lacked credibility, delayed criminal investigations and have been subject to government interference, with several commission members resigning in protest.
A Report by Desmond Tutu and Lakhdar Brahimi, for The Elders, also describes a Sri Lankan commission as “not nearly enough” and that what is needed is an independent, international inquiry.

In line with the members of Congress who wrote to the Secretary of State, we believe it is in the international community’s best interests – and the best interests of the United Kingdom, as well as of Sri Lanka – to ensure a lasting peace in Sri Lanka after such a long period of ethnic conflict. However, we believe that peace can only be reached once the full truth is known and understood.

For all these reasons, we ask you to announce Britain’s support for a robust and independent international investigation that would clarify what occurred during the conflict and offer the best hope of a sustainable peace in Sri Lanka.

Yours sincerely,
Lee Scott (Chair)
Virendra Sharma (Vice Chair)
Siobhain McDonagh (Vice Chair)
Simon Hughes (Vice Chair)

Heidi Alexander
Ian Austin
Hazel Blears
Peter Bottomley
Russell Brown
David Cairns
Martin Caton
Katy Clark
Jeremy Corbyn
Stella Creasy
Jon Cruddas
Jim Cunningham
John Cryer
Jim Dowd
Clive Efford
Mike Gapes
Barry Gardiner
Mary Glindon
Robert Halfon
Tom Harris
Margaret Hodge
Sharon Hodgson
George Howarth
David Lammy
Andy Love
John Mann
Stephen McCabe
John McDonnell
Teresa Pearce
Steve Pound
Nick Raynsford
Chris Ruane
Joan Ruddock
Stephen Timms
Emily Thornberry
Gareth Thomas
Keith Vaz
(Press Release from the All Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils)

Whither independent Judiciary ? –Ministry permission needed even to enforce a court order - Anoma Fonseka

(Lanka-e-News, 17,Feb.2011, 11.18AM) Anoma Fonseka said, the order issued by the Colombo High court to make arrangements to provide General Sarath Fonseka with a hot water Geyzer had not been implemented because this request has been forwarded to the relevant Ministry for its permission.

In this country which is supposed to be following the Democratic tenets, there is another Institution which is wielding a greater power controlling the judicial court. This is a case in point, she pointed out. The General is facing difficulties in using the water provided in the buckets by the prisons kitchen owing to the wounds on his neck he sustained when he fell victim to a LTTE suicide bomb attack. It is well to remind all those who have forgotten that the General suffered all this and more to save the country and eventually to win the war. But as a reward for his sincere patriotism, Heroism and sacrifices, the reward he received was imprisonment finally, she added.
Anoma Fonseka made these comments at the maiden media briefing on the 15th following the inauguration of the new political party of Gen. Sarath Fonseka.

We are compelled to reveal these happenings in the prison at the media briefing because now there is no other way to make it known to the public. The public should know that there is a more powerful force controlling even the independent judiciary. In a Democracy, an independent sacrosanct judiciary is indispensable, but even that is now eroded, she pinpointed.

As a mother,a woman and a housewife, I can now understand well the difficulties we have to face even to prepare a single meal.

We are all living in dire hardships. All of you know that even the General’s pension had been withdrawn. If we can feel the difficulties so acutely, it is imaginable how much the Govt. servants and those in the lower social classes are suffering.
If a full stop must be put on this, we must as women rise against this. All these hardships are because of the profligacy and fiscal mismanagement of the Govt. Just look at the expenditures incurred in maintaining this extravagant Jumbo Cabinet which is ever bloating. The lavish expenditures on wasteful Tamashas and tawdry exhibitionisms. Women are so desperate that they have no time to think of anything except occupying themselves fully on how to cut the coat according to the cloth with a Govt. that is unable to even provide the bare cloth, she bemoaned. In the circumstances, our women who are all in dire straits should take stern measures to oppose this despotic Govt.’s fiscal blunders and wastages in the interest of the common people, she noted.

Forcible take over of land of an infant’s school: Are we living among plunderers and barbaric officers? -Ven. Barnagala Upaitissa Thero


(Lanka-e-News, 12, Feb.2011, 11.00AM) The Chairman of the national housing development Authority (NHDA) along with police officers had at midnight intruded into the premises where an International infants School was being run, and had divided the land on which the School stood into two by barb wiring. One part has been given over to the Homagama local Govt. council and the other part has been appropriated by the NHDA by force. The NHDA comes under the purview of the Ministry of housing, construction, engineering and common amenities of which the Minister is Wimal Weerawansa.

It is the Narita infants School at Mattegoda that has been so acquired.

The Chairman of this Narita infants School chain is Ven. Barnagala Upaitissa Thero. He is a chief Sangha member of Japan, the chief incumbent of the Dambadiva Sanchi Vihara and Sri Lanka Maha Bodhi Association President.
This forcible action of barb wiring and dividing this School had been done on 30 Jan. at 12.00 midnight.

When Lanka e news inquired from Ven. Barnagala Thero, he said, in December 2010, the NHDA had intimated to him that the School was being run on an unauthorized land. Whereupon the Ven. Thero had submitted all the official documents pertaining to the ownership of that land. Yet,, without making any investigations into this,while he was not in the Island, with the help of goons and a violent gang, the Chairman of the NHDA who had also conducted himself as a hooligan taken over this land, the Thero lamented.

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