HRW: US report ignites call for war crimes investigations against Sri Lanka

HRW: US report ignites call for war crimes investigations against Sri Lanka





The US State Department war crimes report to the Senate submitted as mandated by the explanatory statement to the US Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2009, detailed day-by-day account in a format similar to a "model indictment," and said the alleged incidents in the final stages of war may constitute "violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) or crimes against humanity and related harms." Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said, "[g]iven Sri Lanka's complete failure to investigate possible war crimes, the only hope for justice is an independent, international investigation," and added, "concerned governments should use the US State Department report as a clarion call for an international investigation. There are no more excuses for inaction."

US State Department Report
The report while not reaching any legal conclusions listed Common Article 3 of Geneva Conventions, statutes of International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and Rwanda (ICTR), and the statutes of International Criminal Court (ICC) as "useful foundation for reviewing the conduct" described in the State Department's report.

Legal experts pointed out that under basic rules of international criminal law, the US has to give the GoSL the opportunity to investigate itself credibly, and that, further steps are warranted by the international community, if and when the GOSL fails or refuses to do so.

Meanwhile, Tamil circles pointed out that the international community, including the U.S., was responsible for the plight of the Eezham Tamils and the elimination of their de-facto state through a genocidal war, and therefore real 'reconciliation' comes only when the national question is internationally addressed and when appropriate gestures to this effect come from the IC.

The listing in the report of the same three treaties, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), that form the basis for the European Union to determine the human rights thresholds for providing benefits to Governments under the GSP+, made even more remote, the possibility of Sri Lanka obtaining GSP+ concessions. Recent report by the EU commission said that Sri Lanka failed to meet the established rights thresholds.

The US report showed Satellite imagery evidence as possible tool to fill the information vacuum engineered by the Sri Lanka Government to prevent details of illegal conduct by the Sri Lanka armed forces from reaching outside Sri Lanka, and mentioned that independent investigations on the channel-4 video are still to be carried out to establish authenticity of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers executing captive Tamils.

Another noteworthy aspect of the report is the prominence given to the alleged execution of members of the LTTE political section while surrendering to the Sri Lanka military.

======================================================================


http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=30494

HRW

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/10/22/sri-lanka-us-war-crimes-report-details-extensive-abuses

VOA :
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-10-22-voa63.cfm

CSM : http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1022/p06s07-wosc.html

http://www.morungexpress.com/international/35993.html



-----------------------------

Download the report here...



http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/131025.pdf


http://www.tamilnet.com/img/publish/2009/10/US_State_Department_Report_-_2009.pdf



----------------------------

Neither Sri Lanka nor Israel should have impunity in their 'wars on terror'

Neither Sri Lanka nor Israel should have impunity in their 'wars on terror'

By Antony Loewenstein

Antony Loewenstein is an Australian journalist, author of “My Israel Question” and “The Blogging Revolution.” He sits on the Advisory Council of the British-based Sri Lankan Campaign for Peace and Justice.


:
Listen to the Article

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=30&article_id=107256



Israel’s war against the Gazan people in December and January devastated the tiny Strip, killing over 1,400 people, a majority of whom were civilians. The Western powers, including America, England and Australia, backed Israel’s battle against Hamas and shared its belief that destruction of the Islamist group would benefit their interests.

More than six months later, however, the political realities in the region remain virtually unchanged, with Hamas still in control of Gaza, Israel and Egypt imposing an inhumane siege on the area and Israel regularly launching military strikes against “terrorist” targets.

During my visit there in July, I found many of the 1.5 million Palestinians desperate for a normal life, something denied to them for decades due to Israeli occupation and irregular bombardment.

The recent UN released report on Gaza, investigated by distinguished South African Justice Richard Goldstone, found overwhelming evidence that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during the conflict and should be held to account in an international tribunal. Goldstone stressed that the culture of impunity endemic in the Middle East must end the targeting of civilians and their infrastructure and the lack of international will to fully investigate the atrocities carried out in the name of “defeating terrorism.”

Goldstone told US magazine Tikkun that, “the powerful are protected because of their power. But it’s not prejudice it’s politics. They use their power to protect themselves.” Israel and US are determined that the former never face justice for its crimes.

Compare the international outcry over the Gaza massacre to the relative silence toward Sri Lanka’s war against the Tamil people in 2008 and 2009. Conservative estimates place the death roll at over 20,000 people, perhaps as high as 50,000. The Colombo regime dismissed all attempts to cease its military operations, negotiate with the Tamil Tigers or allow the transfer of hundreds of thousands of civilians to safety. Today, close to 300,000 Tamils are trapped in government-imposed camps, surrounded by barbed wire and unable to leave.

The International Crisis Group told the European Parliament in early October that “such restrictions on freedom in the absence of due process are a violation of both national and international law.”

Sri Lanka was fighting its own “war on terror” with the Israeli playbook. Ban all independent media from the war zone, demonize human rights groups as sympathetic to terrorists, dismiss all questioning of tactics as giving in to terrorism and support the doctrine of overwhelming fire-power. Like Israel, Sri Lanka won the battle, but will inevitably lose the war.

Israel has battled Palestinian nationalists for decades and remains unable to destroy the spirit of the people. Independence for the Palestinian people will come one day. Despite extensive media coverage and global sympathy for their cause, the Palestinians are today still stateless and under occupation. But their plight is far better understood than the Tamils.

Israel’s ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, wrote in the London Times in late September that the “farcical” United States Human Rights Council, tasked to investigate the Gaza massacre, should not examine Israel because, it “did its utmost to direct Palestinian civilians out of harm’s way.” Every human rights group in the world has evidence to prove the fallacy of this argument. Israel should be treated like any other country calling itself a democracy and not excused because of its bellicose tactics in the global arena.

A growing number of Jewish groups are joining this call, unafraid of being labelled anti-Semitic or self-hating and simply believing in equitable justice. An initiative I co-founded, Independent Australian Jewish Voices, is part of this conversation, regularly working with Palestinians over our shared concerns.


Proser demanded to know why the UN wasn’t investigating the “300,000 Tamil civilians currently languishing in Sri Lanka.” It’s a fair question, except his ideal outcome would be impunity for Western states fighting their own “war on terror.” In this worldview, it’s only developing or Third World nations worthy of sanction.

Sadly, the vast majority of Muslim and Middle East countries, except Bosnia, voted with Sri Lanka in the UN Human Rights Council in May to support its war against the Tamil people. The idea of non-democratic nations backing a brutal regime isn’t new; defeating “terrorism” is a language democracies and dictatorships both share. The fact that the UN is a flawed body doesn’t prevent it from conducting important work in the field of human rights and abuse prevention.

Sri Lanka doesn’t enjoy favored nation status like Israel but it should face a thorough examination of its conduct during the war. Many states, such as Israel and China, have no desire to discover the truth behind the conflict because they provided arms to the Sri Lankan government. Israel is reportedly protecting Sri Lanka from any American pressure against its actions. But obstacles to international justice should not preclude their commencement. Crimes in Congo, Sierra Leone, Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia were thoroughly investigated by legal bodies, even if the final outcomes were not perfect.

It is time for the Sri Lanka leaders to understand that destroying a terrorist infrastructure without political and social assistance to the vanquished is doomed to failure. The Sri Lankan government will need to be convinced that normal relations with the world will not be possible until its crimes against the Tamils are acknowledged.
Peace with justice demands nothing less.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Poor Conditions of Concentration Camps - Tamil Eelam /Srilanka

New film appears to reveal the victims of Sri Lanka's war suffering poor conditions in UN-funded camps. They are among the victims of Sri Lanka's civil war, living in camps funded by the UN.

Now footage has come to light apparently showing how bad conditions are in the camps - patients on intravenous drips lying on mud floors, a man so weak he is unable to brush the flies from his face. The mobile phone footage, from the group War Without Witness, was reportedly shot two weeks ago in Vavuniya, in northern Sri Lanka, where 200,000 displaced Tamils are being held.

The concern now is that when the monsoon rain season begins, the camp will be flooded. The plight of Tamil children was raised by Unicef spokesman James Elder, who has just been expelled from the country




Video2 :






Video 2 :





---------------------------

The Jakarta Post Article

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/09/07/sri-lanka-government-mustn039t-ignore-tamils-camps.html?t=1252337125

Sri Lanka government mustn't ignore Tamils in camps
Lakhdar Brahimi and Edward Mortimer , New York Mon, 09/07/2009 1:25 PM

It is now three months since Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared the country "liberated" from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels after a 26-year war.

He said then that he wanted to settle most of the displaced Tamil civilians within 180 days--but today, with more than half that time elapsed, nearly 300,000 are still being held in "internment camps," to which the media and humanitarian organizations have virtually no access.

One person who was able to visit some of them in May was UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. He said: "I have traveled round the world and visited similar places, but these are by far the most appalling scenes I have seen...."
In mid-August, these camps were flooded by downpours which, according to The New York Times, "sent rivers of muck cascading between tightly packed rows of flimsy shelters, overflowed latrines and sent hundreds of families scurrying for higher ground."

"We all knew that the monsoon rain would come," says Nimalka Fernando, a Sri Lankan human rights activist and lawyer. "Many alerted the authorities. The government should have evacuated the displaced people earlier. It is terrible now. I am not sure whether the authorities can handle these conditions. Who can bear their children getting sick?"

Moreover, there is no public list of those being held in the camps, and many families do not know whether their loved ones are alive or dead.

The brutal and violent methods used by the LTTE during the conflict are beyond dispute. But while it was going on the government claimed to draw a distinction between LTTE fighters and the law-abiding Tamil population, whose genuine political grievances it would address once the "terrorists" had been defeated.
So far, nothing like that has happened. Although it has screened out those it believes were LTTE cadres and sent them to separate camps, the government repeatedly extends its own deadline for releasing the civilians who are still in the main camps.

People who question this inside Sri Lanka, like Fernando, are accused of being traitors in the pay of "the LTTE diaspora," while outsiders are accused of using humanitarian concerns as an excuse for neo-imperialist intervention. Sri Lankan journalists who criticized the government have been arrested, beaten and in some cases murdered in broad daylight, while many more have fled the country. Foreign journalists have been kicked out, and Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are not allowed in.

In the last weeks of fighting an estimated 20,000 civilians lost their lives. Government forces are accused of shelling Tamil civilians and killing people who tried to surrender.

The LTTE are charged with using civilians as human-shields, forcibly recruiting them as fighters and shooting those who tried to flee. There are rumors of mass graves but no independent observer has been allowed into the war zones to investigate. The government claims to have won the "war on terror." within its own frontiers, and denies the right of countries that have been less successful to question its methods.

As one of the five "Colombo Powers" which organized the historic Bandung Conference in 1955, and a leading member of the Nonaligned Movement, Sri Lanka was, for many decades, a responsible democracy, even a model member of the international community. Surely, the people of Sri Lanka do not want to compromise that enviable status, and with it their good standing in the main groups that represent the developing world.

Friends of Sri Lanka the world over, especially in the developing world, do not understand why Rajapaksa chose Myanmar as the first country to visit after winning the war. They were concerned to read, on the government's own website, that one reason for this choice was that "the (Myanmar) generals are increasingly finding it difficult to contain insurgent groups in the country's northern frontier and are willing to learn some fresh lessons from President Mahindra Rajapaksa on how to defeat the enemy."

That is not what the international community in general, and the developing world in particular, wishes to learn from Sri Lanka. Rather, friends of Sri Lanka were -- and still are--expecting the country to be faithful to its democratic tradition and act on Rajapaksa's promises that the rights of minorities would be respected, that the displaced would be helped to return home, and that prisoners would be treated humanely.

We do not believe that most people in Sri Lanka agree with what some are saying in Colombo to the effect that developing country governments can best deal with internal opposition by crushing it ruthlessly and treating any advice to respect universal principles of human rights and humanitarian law (which Sri Lanka agreed to uphold when it signed and ratified many treaties and conventions) as hypocritical.

Sadly, the government's willingness to ignore these principles has met with very little international resistance. Even the United States, which has urged the rapid release of all civilians and deplored the government's slow timetable on political reform, is simultaneously encouraging US investors to "make Sri Lanka your next business stop."

This puts a heavy responsibility on all who are close to Sri Lanka's ruling elite and on Asia's key powers -- India, Japan and China -- which have been staunch supporters of the Rajapaksa government and have channeled large sums of money in its direction (much of it, recently, for humanitarian purposes). It is time for the people of these countries to insist on a full account of how their money is being spent, and for their governments to say clearly that further economic and political support will depend on the following conditions being fulfilled:

1. The United Nations, international Red Cross and voluntary agencies must be given full and unhindered access to care for and protect the civilians in the camps, and then help them return to wherever in their own country they choose to live.

2. A list of all those still alive and in custody should be published, so that families can stop searching for loved ones who are dead.

3. Any who continue to be detained as alleged LTTE combatants must be treated in accordance with the provisions of international law, and urgently given access to legal representation.

4. Accountability processes must be established to ensure that international aid is not diverted to purposes other than those for which it was given.

5. The Sri Lankan government should invite regional and international specialists in conflict reconciliation to help rebuild lives and communities.

6. Sri Lanka should request or accept a full UN investigation into war crimes committed by all parties during the war.

The government has won the war, and the world shares the feeling of relief visible among Sri Lanka's people. It remains for them to win the peace, and the rest of the world must help. That is the purpose of the demands listed above. World leaders as well as public opinion must insist on them, not only for the benefit of Tamils in general and the detainees in particular, but also for the hopes of democracy and human rights throughout Sri Lanka, and beyond. Peace won by the brutal humiliation of a people is rarely secure.

Lakhdar Brahimi is a former foreign minister of Algeria and UN special envoy. Edward Mortimer is senior vice president of the Salzburg Global Seminar and formerly chief speechwriter for former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Both are members of the Advisory Council of the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace & Justice (www.srilankacampaign.org).

....