Amnesty INTERNATIONAL EXPOSES .... TAMIL GENOCIDE......

COMMISSION OF INQUIRY-

Amnesty INTERNATIONAL EXPOSES

 November 2006, Amnesty International said that the Commission of Inquiries consisting of 8 Sri Lankan nationals, and the International Independent Group of eminent Persons (IIGEP) of foreign nationals to act as observers, as announced by Sri Lanka's President, lack "credibility and confidence of parties to the conflict and sections of the society to be able to conduct meaningful investigations, obtain critical testimony or information from witnesses and gain the acceptance of its recommendations by all relevant parties," in a report issued 17 November, and declined to nominate an AI member to stand as candidate to IIGEP.

 Contrary to Mr. Rajapakse's announcement on 4 September 2006 that Sri Lanka government would "invite an international independent commission to probe abductions, disappearances and extra-judicial killings," Mr. Rajapakse on 6 September 2006, instead announced that "he would invite an International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP) to act as observers of the activities of the Commission consisting of Sri Lanka nationals] which will investigate alleged abductions, disappearances and extra judicial killings," Amnesty said. "In light of decades of impunity for perpetrators of violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in Sri Lanka, characterized by the failure of the authorities to investigate and prosecute such perpetrators effectively, only an international and independent Commission would have the credibility and confidence of all parties to the conflict and sections of society," Amnesty added. Amnesty expressed serious concerns on the functioning of the CoI established under the Commissions of Inquiry Act No. 17 of 1948. The Act grants the President the power to:  

• set the terms of reference of the Commission of Inquiry and appoint all its members (sec.2);
• add new members at his/her discretion (sec. 3); revoke the warrant establishing the Commission at any time (sec. 4); and
• appoint the Commission’s secretary (sec. 19) without needing to consult the Commission or its chairperson.

Amnesty said. The Amnesty said further that "The decision as to whether the inquiry – "or any part thereof" is to be public also rests solely with the President (sec. 2(2) (d)). In addition, there are no provisions in the Act requiring that the reports or recommendations of the Commission are made public.

"Amnesty International is concerned that these and other provisions, which grant the President a wide discretion, may undermine the independence and impartiality of the COI, as well as the Commission’s ability to inspire public confidence and interact freely with the public. Accordingly these factors may undermine the willingness of the public to engage with the COI and to come forward with evidence, the report said. Amnesty called on Sri Lanka's President to add independent, impartial and competent international experts to the proposed COL and to ensure that the COI’s work is developed in consultation with a representative profile of civil society, including NGOs.

Dravida Peravai had taken pains to quote very few Reports from various sources spanning over past few years to drive home to the Office of the Public Prosecutor that we Indian Tamils are urging your probe not as an act of vendetta against the victor Srilankan President Mahinda Rajapakshe in the war against Tamils.

We in fact are producing evidences beyond his term and even before his arrival in the scene, to emphasize that all Sinhalese Governments more or less were adopting the same policy to ethnic cleanse, and the charges against current Government is but a continuation of those charges, which in overall context must be probed in totality.

BACKGROUND:

"At the end of July 1983, Sri Lanka witnessed its worst outburst of ethnic violence since independence, causing severe loss of life and property to the Tamil minority..... A (Sri Lanka) government spokesman has denied that the destruction and killing of Tamils amounted to genocide. Under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, acts of murder committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such are considered as acts of genocide. The evidence points clearly to the conclusion that the violence of the Sinhalese rioters on the Tamils amounted to acts of genocide." - The International Commission of Jurists Review, December 1983

" ..The present conflict has transcended the special consideration of minority rights and has reached the point where the basic human rights of the Tamil community - the rights to life and property, freedom of speech and self expression and freedom from arbitrary arrest have in fact and in law been subject to gross and continued violations.  Tamils of Sri Lanka: Minority Rights Group Report, September 1983

"The ethnic violence which erupted in Sri Lanka in July 1983 brought untold misery to the Tamils. They were beaten, hacked and burnt to death in a frenzy of racial hatred. Their houses and businesses were selectively looted and destroyed. The Sri Lankan government had admitted that the violence was pre planned and well organized and that even sections of the security forces joined in the attack against the Tamils. . . Yet to date no impartial inquiry into these violent attacks has taken place. Amnesty International (AI) recently reported a number of cases of extrajudicial killings and secret disposal of bodies without inquest or post mortem. The Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) have also reported on a number of cases of torture and death in custody of persons detained incommunicado for period up to 18 months under the Sri Lankan Prevention of Terrorism Act.' No legislation conferring remotely comparable powers is in force in any other free democracy... such a provision is an ugly blot on the statute book of any civilized country'(International Commission of Jurists).

[David Alton MP, Paddy Ashdown MP, Norman Atkinson MP, Tony Banks MP, Prof John Barret, Kevin Barron MP, Alan Beith MP, Tony Benn MP, Gerry Birmingham M.P., Prof Tom Bottomore, Sydney Bidwell MP, Malcolm Bruce MP, Dale Campbell-Savors MP, Dennis Canavan MP, Alex Carlile MP, Tom Clarke MP, Bob Clay MP, Anne Clwyd MP, Harry Cohan MP, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Ron Davis MP, Eric Deakins MP, Alf Dubs MP, Professor Michael Dummet, Derek Fatchett MP, Mark Fisher MP, Martin Flanrcery MP, Roy Hattersley MP, MichaelFoot MP, Simon W.H. HughesMP, Lord Jenkins, RusselJohnston MP, Sir David Lane" Robert Kilroy Silk MP, Archy Kirkwood MP, Ted Knight, Terry Lewis MP, Bob Lither land MP, Ken Livingstone, TonyLloydMP,EddieLoydenMP,MaxMaddenMP,JoanMaynardMP, Willie McKelvy MP, Bill Michael MP, Dr.Paul Noone, Bob Parry MP, Alan Roberts MP, Ernie Roberts MP, Allan Rogers MP, Aubrey Rose, Ernie Ross MP, Steven Ross MP, Clare Short MP, Dennis Skinner MP, Prof Peter Townsend, Jim Wallace MP, Gareth Wardell MP, Dafydd Wigley MP , The Guardian, 28 July 1984]

Srilanka is tying to kill or terrorize as many Tamils as possible accuses Margaret Trawick, Professor of Social Anthropology, Massey University Palmerton North, New Zealand 28 April 1996

."I have been reading reports about the SLA's northward march with mounting despair. At first, the reports coming from the SL military and from the LTTE appeared diametrically opposed. The military said that displaced Tamils were returning north to their homes voluntarily; the LTTE said they were fleeing across the lagoon to the mainland. The military reported that there were bodies laying around that the LTTE hadn't picked up, and the Tigers were chastised for being so disrespectful of their own dead. The LTTE responded with a brief silence. Then the reports began to converge. The LTTE also reported that there were bodies lying around that, indeed, it had not had the capacity to bury properly. Not only LTTE bodies, but civilian bodies. Now according to the Reuters report, the military says it has captured the key lagoon crossing, "to halt the flow of hundreds of Tamil civilians fleeing the peninsula."

The Defense Ministry appears to admit that the people traveling north were trapped and forced in that direction by the advancing army. The LTTE has reported that fleeing Tamil civilians have been subject to strafing and shelling by the army; military officials say that "hundreds of Tamil civilians are risking being shot at" to flee to safety across the lagoon. One may well ask these military officials who exactly is shooting at these fleeing civilians. Meanwhile those who travel north into the Valigamam area are, according to the military, "screened to ensure there is no LTTE infiltration," while the LTTE reports that all young Tamil men and women entering Valigamam are being arrested and being taken in for questioning, which is the only thing (in this context, and in my view) that "screening" could mean.

No journalists or outside reporters or observers of any kind are allowed into the north. No aid of any kind is allowed into areas that are not "controlled by the military." Such areas are being shelled as enemy territory... I have been struggling in my mind against the conclusion that the SL government is trying to kill or terrorize as many Tamil people as possible; that the government is trying to keep the conditions of the war unreported internationally, because if those conditions were reported, the actions of the military would be perceived as so deplorable that foreign nations would have no choice but to condemn them. And this would be embarrassing to everybody. But it seems now that no other conclusion is possible...

Sri Lanka's Reprisal Killings of Tamil non combatants

 The bullet-ridden bodies of Sivarasa Krishna and Palanivel Gunasingham were found at Selvanayagapuram in Trincomalee on-29 May. The two Tamil youths had been abducted in a white van the previous night from Anbuvalipuram. White vans are associated with military death squads and a number of people abducted have disappeared. Tamil MP M Chandrakumar says in a letter to President Chandrika that white vans are creating widespread fear and has called for immediate inquiry. Observers say abductions are the Army's response to Tiger attacks. - Sri Lanka Monitor, published by British Refugee Council, May 1996

"Police (mostly STF officers) and army personnel committed extrajudicial killings in both Jaffna and the Eastern Province... In February 1996 army troops murdered 24 Tamil villagers, including 2 children less than 12 years of age, in the eastern village of Kumarapuram. ... In some cases these extrajudicial killings were reprisals against civilians for LTTE attacks in which members of the security forces were killed or injured. Several such reprisals occurred during operations by the STF. In many cases, the security forces claimed that the victims were members of the LTTE. However, human rights monitors have determined that these victims were civilians. ... There were also a number of suspicious deaths attributed to the security forces, mostly involving detainees..."  - U.S. Department of State, Sri Lanka Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1996, January 1997

"Sri Lankan forces stationed at Elephant Pass have directed artillery shells at the Kilinochi hospital. The attack is thought to have been the army's retaliation for the fall of Mullaitivu. The indiscriminate shelling resulted in the deaths of five civilians. Another sixteen were wounded. Those injured included the head of the Sri Lankan Red Cross Mr.Vinayagamoorthy. Many who had lost their limbs in the attack have been dispatched to the hospital at Vavunya. Also in retaliation for the fall of Mullativu Sri Lankan soldiers stationed at the Thandikulam barrier fired on Tamil civilians who were waiting to cross the barrier. Mortar shells and bullets were directed towards the people by the army." - Tamil Monitor, 29 July 1996

All branches of the security forces as well as Muslim and Sinhalese home guards and armed cadres of Tamil groups opposed to the LTTE were cited by survivors and witnesses as responsible for human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions, "disappearances", torture and arbitrary arrest and detention. Some of the violations apparently took place in reprisal for attacks by the LTTE... - Amnesty International Report, September 1996

Trial by Fire: National Geographic Explorer Programme on Sri Lanka, broadcast on TBS on 2 December 1996 Patricia Lawrence, Anthropological Consultant for the Film, Anthropology Department, Colorado University.

The film examines a Tamil family's response to the government's practices of arrest and imprisonment under emergency law in the eastern District of Batticaloa. The story unfolds through the voice of a young Tamil mother whose husband has "disappeared" and whose brother has been transferred from a local detention center to Kalutara prison in the south.

In connection with this program I might mention that I have received "hate mail" from Sinhalese viewers, telephone calls from the State Dept, and a wheel chair for a Tamil father who had both hips broken during interrogation-he was held for three years in a number of prisons and as his fractured hips were never treated he suffers a permanently frozen pelvic girdle. There should be a fund for Tamil people who suffer permanent physical injuries as a result of torture. I would like to congratulate National Geographic for the recent airing of "Trial by Fire," a documentary which presents a profile of one young Tamil mother `s struggle in eastern Sri Lanka, a region cordoned-off from the rest of the island by government military forces since 1990. Her husband is listed among the tens of thousands of Tamil people who have "disappeared" in this Tamil-speaking region. Her brother was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned without charge under the government's emergency regulations. She is urgently in need of employment. The circumstances of her life are not atypical in eastern Sri Lanka, where Tamil families have suffered 14 years of civil war. National Geographic's documentary has provoked official protest from the Sri Lankan embassy and a flood of messages from Sri Lankan Tamil people living in the United States and Canada who expressed gratitude for media acknowledgment of the human impact of the protracted war-even though, as National Geographic has stated, "much of the political content was virtually eliminated."

 The transmission of "Trial by Fire" coincides with the US State Department's approval of the sale of lethal weaponry to the government of Sri Lanka-even in a historical moment when human rights conditions are deteriorating on the island.

The idea of endeavoring to send a film crew into eastern Sri Lanka arose at the 1995 American Anthropological Association meetings in Washington D.C., where a BBC -Granada film director listened to my presentation of ethnographic material about survivors of torture and families of the "disappeared" in Batticaloa District. When I agreed to work as anthropological consultant for the film project, I was frank about ethical-political problems and my doubts that we could overcome government censorship on life inside the Tamil-speaking areas. Yet we succeeded in carrying out the film project in Batticaloa District, under the shadow of daily government intelligence and counter-subversive unit scrutiny, and difficulties of movement under the de facto military regime in the eastern coastal plain. The greatest obstacle, however, was finding people who could speak on camera in a population so vulnerable to human rights atrocities. The segments of film aired in "Trial by Fire" depended largely upon the collaborative effort of five women. We encouraged one another and worked together in the face of uncertainty about the consequences of our acts. Brian Moser of the "Disappearing Worlds" series directed the film crew.

The larger film project produced more than 30 times the footage transmitted in the National Geographic show. This footage serves as material for several documentary films. An hour-long BBC documentary to be aired early next year in the UK incorporates local Tamil people's narratives on the recent history of retaliation killings and mass extrajudicial executions, indiscriminate shelling, and intense social suffering of Tamil people...

Control over editing, scripts and voice-over was not granted to me as anthropological consultant, following the usual policy. Some important film segments pertinent to this story were deleted in the editing process. For example, narratives on the prisoner's experience of torture were cut as were discussions between the prisoner's sister, wife and the human rights lawyer which reveal how abduction, ill treatment, forced confession, incommunicado detention and long-term detention without charge is facilitated by emergency law and the Prevention of Terrorism act in Sri Lanka. As an ethnographer, I wished to hear the original words of the speakers - for the voices of ordinary Tamil people are hardest to hear outside the war zone. The use of voice-over instead of subtitles contributes to distortion and misrepresentation. I regretted the editors' selection of titillating film segments of "exoticized" local religious practices. It is interesting, however, that the written responses of Sri Lankan Tamil viewers lack criticism of the exoticization of Tamil "otherness" portrayed in scenes of the resurgence of local Amman temple ritual. The overwhelming concern expressed by Tamil viewers was that in spite of rigid censorship a message about the desperate plight of Tamil people who endure and bear violent repression succeeded in reaching an international audience. Emergency powers have been used by successive governments in Sri Lanka to close newspapers, to prevent camera equipment and journalists from entering areas of active conflict, enable government security forces to destroy evidence of possible extrajudicial executions, and to prohibit distribution of academic writing and information about human rights violations. For more than 26 of the past 42 years Sri Lanka has been ruled under a declared state of emergency. From the perspective of many local families with whom I have lived in the eastern war zone between 1991 and 1996, this is a historical moment when there is no room for dissent. These families live in an uncertain world where the rule is to "keep quiet" (maunamaka irukkavum; amaityaka irukkavum) about broken connections in the closest circle of human relationships.

The question I am left with is how can we, as South Asian scholars, follow in the footsteps of this film project and contribute more effective responses to political silencing of severe human rights crises?

  

Tamil Civilians disappearing says TULF MP

A Tamil MP has alleged that about 300 persons disappeared" during the last three months while in Army custody in the Government-controlled Jaffna peninsula. Mr. Joseph Pararajasingham, TULF MP, said in a letter to the President, Ms. Chandrika Kumaratunga: "Disappearances while in Army custody are increasing day by day in the Army-controlled peninsula. I am reliably informed that during the last three months about 300 disappearances while in Army custody are reported to have taken place in Jaffna."

Mr. Joseph stated in his November 21 letter that six decayed bodies of Tamil civilians had been found on November 18 in the Tenamarachchi portion of the peninsula. "These are civilians arrested by the Army in the first week of October 1996 and when the relatives inquired from the Army authorities immediately after their arrest they were informed that none of them was taken into custody by the Army. The bodies of these unfortunate civilians found in a decomposed state were discovered by the local residents of the area," Mr. Joseph alleged in his letter. According to the MP, four of the six bodies had been identified as Ponnu Alagaretnam (33), Kandiah Thiyagarajah (44), Kandiah Kulendrarajah and Thamu Manickam (43). While the first three named were residents of Eluthumadduval, Manickam hailed from Mirusuvil. Mr. Joseph, who has given a list of 24 "disappeared" persons, said unless immediate action was taken against the offenders such cases would bring "discredit to the Government". Mr. Joseph called upon the President to appoint a commission of inquiry into the disappearances from August 1996 in Jaffna and a judicial inquiry into the killing of the six civilians in Tenamarachchi. [- Hindu Report from Amit Baruah, 23 November 1996]

[Mr.Joseph Pararajasingam and Nandhivarman in New Delhi 1997]

Article URL: http://www.tamilcanadian.com/page.php?id=503