(March 31, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The government expected to obtain the full participation of Sri Lanka’s youth in the tasks of National Development, and the new University of Vocational Technology is an important move for this purpose, said President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the inauguration of Sri Lanka’s first university of Vocational Technology at Rathmalana today (31).

Under the prevailing system of education in the country only a small number of the annual intake of 380,000 to schools obtain opportunities for university education. It was therefor necessary to provide facilities for those who stop their education midway to obtain the necessary technological skills to enter the workforce and participation in national development, the President said.

The President recalled that the foundation for the development of improved vocational education was laid when he was Minister of Labor and Vocational Training in 1994 when the Vocational Training Authority was established. He was glad to participate in the launch of this new University of vocational technology which will widen the scope of university education and give more opportunities for youth for obtain advanced knowledge in many field of technology.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

(March 31, Gampaha, Sri Lanka Guardian) Police are unable to locate the whereabouts of UPFA Parliamentarian Sarana Gunawardena who is wanted in connection with the abduction attempt of a child whose father is a supporter of a fellow UPFA candidate in the up coming polls to the Western Provincial Council.

Weeragula police said they will notify Court today that they are unable to locate the MP to carry out further investigations.

Police said they had gone to the MPs house twice but he had not been available for interrogation.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

(March 31, Trincomalee, Sri Lanka Guardian) Another two suspects, in custody over the abduction and murder of a child in Trincomalee, were killed in a shooting incident today.

“The two were taken to a location in Uppuweli Kanya to search for suicide jackets. While returning with the suicide kit, the police party was ambushed by LTTE cadres.

In the ensuing firefight the two suspects died and a Sub Inspector and a Police sergeant sustained injuries,” said Vas Gunawardena, Superintendent of Police, Troncomalee.

He said that information had been received that Pandyan, a suspect killed in police fire, had connections with both the TMVP and the LTTE.

There was also information that Pandyan was involved in a plot to assassinate the District Secretary, Trincomalee; Governor of the Eastern Province; DIG Trincomalee and the Chief Minister of the Eastern Province, SP Gunawardena said.

He added that the injured police officers would be transferred to the National hospital.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

(March 31, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The National Transport Commission has received complaints to the effect that several buses that did not take part in today’s inter province bus strike had been attacked in various parts of the island.

“The names of those responsible for the attacks have been handed over to the police,” said Dr. Amal Kumarage, Chairman of the Commission.

Bus owners and employees who operate on inter provincial bus routes kept away from work today claiming that the National Transport Commission was imposing unfair fines on them.

They claimed that they were severely inconvenienced by the regulations imposed by the Commission.

However, commuters too have been severely inconvenienced as a result of the strike carried out in several parts of the country.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

By Saybhan Samat

(March 31, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) A new phenomenon in Sri Lanka today is the proliferation of an ilk called spin doctors. They abound in plenty, writing and broadcasting points of view in support of whoever they are supporting. Broadly speaking although there are spin doctors for a variety of causes, the spin –doctors that are high-profile are those in support of the ruling party and those that oppose it. Those spinning for the government today are for the major part those that have received some benefit from the authorities and those spinning for the opposition are those who are spinning in the hope of getting benefit and perks from the opposition in the event that the opposition comes into power at a later date.

There are however honest persons both supporting the authorities and those in the opposition on account of them believing that their convictions for supporting the authorities or the opposition are genuine. They honestly analyze events and give sound reason as to why they support the views they hold for the authorities or for the opposition. On the other hand the spin-doctor at most times is a sycophant, prostrating at the feet of dishonest and corrupt politicians and praising them and their policies to high heaven, although the people know that these politicians do not deserve any praise whatsoever. Spin doctors on the opposition side are mostly those working for the INGOs and NGOs. Spin doctors working for the NGOs further the agendas of foreign governments and spin stories to promote intervention by the UN or promoting R2P.

Spin doctors on both sides are perhaps the best-paid, enjoying unbelievable reward in perks for themselves and their families. Since the geo-strategic importance of Sri Lanka has grown INGOs and NGOs are hell-bent to indirectly help foreign governments to implement their agendas and machinations in our strife torn island.

For the most part spin-doctors as the term implies are those who sell their souls for a mess of pottage, they are very obsequious before their masters and there need for money and perks for the shameless work they do is unbounding. Those who can identify the spin doctors know them as well as the lines in their palms. They are generally scorned upon as they tell lies are dishonest and have no principles.

Spin doctors have existed even before history. They are adept at massaging the ego of those in authority. At the flip of a coin they can produce a panegyric over-blowing the true character of a ruler. Monarchs and rulers paid them handsomely and gave them high office in their government.

On the other hand spin-doctors who are against the rulers working for the opposition, produced works for the opposition, that would ridicule the rulers good works, character assassinate them in a way to escape defamation and libel and scorn on their policies and programmes.

Common to both, were the lies, sycophancies, obsequiousness and outrage in their work. It is very easy to detect the efforts of the spin –doctor. The more the spin-doctor writes or broadcasts the more hypocrisy and baseness of his/her character is unmasked. Although the practice of spin-doctoring is a universal phenomenon and spin-doctors justify the immoral work they are doing the honest people are aware of their despicable character.

Spin-doctors can be marginalized by honest broadcasters and writers producing work that analyze events dispassionately, truthfully with a moral base with facts and with spiritual knowledge. There are well known writers and broadcasters who do this and the public know them well. The public are not fools, these writers and broadcasters ultimately influence events and the destiny of nations. The only problem is that such writers and broadcasters are only very few in number, it is the spin-doctor who holds sway, however they do not influence the common people very much.

With the Western Province provincial council elections just around the corner, one can notice the spin-doctor’s work in the leaflets of the hand-outs that the candidates are distributing. Even the cut-outs and posters all over town have the markings of spin-doctor work.

Spin-doctors mainly thrive on publishing and broadcasting lies. When truth prevails after sometime as it must, in some instances these spin doctors are assaulted even assassinated. If spin doctors don’t spin, but only adhere to the truth, they would be contributing a valuable and priceless gift to the well-being of any society.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

(March 31,Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian)The Indian government has plans to expand the Pulmoddai hospital and has offered more food and medical aid to Sri Lanka. Another batch of Indian doctors too had arrived in the island last week, India’s Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon has said.

According to the BBC, India’s Foreign Secretary had made this offer at a press conference in New Delhi.

Steps had been taken to expand the Indian funded hospital in Pulmoddai and an additional batch of doctors had been sent to the hospital last week, Mr. Menon had said.

He had also said that the Indian government had already shipped more medicine and food supplies to those displaced due to the conflict.

The BBC quoted the Indian foreign secretary as saying that the supply of food to the area had decreased considerably during the past month.

Commenting on the official visit of the Indian Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary, T. K. A. Nair to the island last week, Mr. Menon had said that the Principal Secretary had focused on three major areas.

The three major issues had been to urge the Sri Lankan government to take steps towards a credible devolution and political package; to explore how India could help reconstruction in the North and East; and India’s role in humanitarian assistance.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

By Michael Roberts

Hasty Disapproval

(March 31, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) For years cricket has been beset with poor umpiring decisions. Some of these decisions have impacted on the course of a game and swung the outcome in favour of one side. In the past decade or so the evidence of new technologies has revealed such flaws in all their nakedness. Despite such evidence some cricketers continued to bury their head in the sand and claim that poor decisions in their favour evened out. This was arrant nonsense because the balancing out did not necessarily occur within the same match.

In this context the Referral System was introduced on a trial basis by the ICC for good reasons, reasons that I will specify in detail in the second part of my essay. The trial referral scheme, alas, has generated a series of knee-jerk reactions of distaste from a range of voices. The negativity is absolutely mind-boggling. Among the voices are a number of captains directed by the immediate circumstance of this or that decision or the weight of referrals going against their team. Kumble in Sri Lanka in 2008 as well as Vettori and Gayle in New Zealand in 2009 are examples of such a response.

There are also the usual suspects from within the die-hard conservative order. Some are from the umpiring fraternity defending the regime of on-field umpires. Daryl Hair, predictably, is one such voice, with Malcom Conn, equally predictably, serving as sidekick trumpet (Australian, March 2009).

What I find most disappointing is the critical interpretations served out by normally insightful commentators, such as Sambit Bal and Tony Cozier. Cozier’s reaction appears to be prompted by some terrible interventions by the third umpire during the ongoing West Indies-England series. But the third umpire at several such moments was Daryl Harper who has an unenviable record of terrible or poor decisions as on-field umpire (with Murali and Sri Lanka at the sharp end of some of these not-outs) – confirming that any monitoring system is only as good as its personnel. I have not seen the TV versions of these contentious decisions of referral so I cannot comment further.

However, I was present through most of the India-Sri Lanka Test Series in July August 2008 from the same vantage point in the press box as Sambit Bal and my verdict is diametrically opposed to his: in my view the referral scheme is among the best recent innovations in cricket. This is not because Sri Lanka was favoured by the weight of such referrals. That weightage, after all, arose in part because in Ajantha Mendis they have a bowler who bowls wicket to wicket and in part because the Sri Lankans used the scheme judiciously.

There was reason for my verdict. Some fair decisions were reached with the aid of the Referral System on occasions when it would have been impossible for the on-field umpire to have reached a conclusive verdict. A case in point was Tendulkar being given out caught – quite brilliantly by Dilshan at leg-slip – at the SSC ground after the ball went pad to glove and curled back over Dilshan’s shoulder. From the vantage of press box above and behind the wicket I immediately thought it was out. It would have been virtually impossible for the main umpire to discern the series of effects. He rightly denied the call. The fielders knew that it was a definite catch and called the referrals into play. Replays enabled the third umpire to communicate with the on-field umpire and restore justice.

This sort of restitution of fair decision, whether in favour of the batsman, or, alternatively, the fielding side, will occur in other games. My impression is that it has happened fairly often during the trial of the Referral System though I have not kept count. It is vital that batsmen given out caught behind off a nick on shirt or hip should be permitted to bat on through corrections with the aid of referrals. Likewise, especially with hot-spot now added to the review scheme, referrals enable a fine-tuned assessment of nicks, off pad, or non-nicks, to close-in fielders; or lbw decisions where there is a suspicion of a prior edge off bat.

Two recent incidents during the Third Test between Australia and South Africa provide strong evidence in support of the Referral System. The left-hander Hughes was given out lbw by Bucknor to the left-hander Harris’s break moving in. The decision was not challenged, but the TV commentators adjudicated that a referral would have led to a reversal because the point of contact was not quite between wicket and wicket. Two days later, on 21 March, Bucknor gave Harris out to Katich’s googly breaking from off and clearly heading for the stumps. Harris challenged the verdict through a referral and was reprieved.

These were replica cases within the same match. They underline the value of the Referral System. In neither instance was Bucknor’s initial verdict a poor decision. That is, his erroneous verdict was an understandable line-ball call, a Category C error as distinct from Category B, viz., Poor Decision and Category A, Horrendous Decision. In no way was the reversal in Harris’s case an indictment of on-field umpires. Rather Bucknor should be pleased that he was able to participate in reversing an understandable line-ball error.

The different types of line-ball decisions are the realms where controversy has developed. One strand of criticism leveled at the referral scheme concentrates on line-ball lbw decisions dependent on verdicts as to whether the ball pitched on the imaginary lines between wicket and wicket on the leg-side. The referral that saved Michael Hussey in South Africa recently is one such example. As part of a general argument about lack of consistency, Justin Langer argues against this reversing act.

“Replays showed it pitched about a quarter of a centimetre outside leg stump. It looked plumb but was shown to just a smudge outside the line. If you can’t give that out, you can’t give anything.” (Australian, March 2009).

This verdict moves from one specific type of case that has promoted malcontent voices to a generalization about all referrals. Note that Langer’s strident voice ends with a gross exaggeration – marked here in bold letters. There are many lbws, occasionally even those challenged by a batsman’s referral, where it is shown conclusively that the ball pitched within the mat, so, here, Langer is spitting s..t. It is important to stress in counterpoint that there are some reversals of Category C or Category B decisions because the slow-motion replay with aid of photographic mat has revealed that the ball pitched outside the mat.

One of India’s finest journalists crashes headlong on values ethical and moral

By Durga Velautham in New Delhi

(March 31, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The well known and much acclaimed Indian journalist Arundhati Roy and who has to her most deserving credit many literary accomplishments certainly went berserk like a lone elephant in musk in her feature on the current tragic events in Sri Lanka. In her very opening lines she skates on slick and slimy grounds determined to do for Velupillai Prabhakaran who appears to be her folk hero, a kind of parting gift as if for favours done to her. It was like a eulogy for the dead who never deserved such in life.

In so doing, she tarnished her image she has created for herself of which people of India were proud with one stroke of material that poured out of her laptop which can in no way be justified as coming from a writer of her skill, foresight and ability. Her integrity has crashed and such is the material she has indulged in, she can ever never redeem herself. The world cannot have one good word for Velupillai Prabhakaran and in history he has already earned for himself a place in the international gallery of tyrants.

What did the Tamils of Sri Lanka do to have such a brigand dominate their history for over three decades and the consequences of which will continue to hurt them for some decades more? How come a journalist of great repute was prepared to twist realities and place her integrity on the block ignoring the fate of the very people Prabhakaran has determined as their destiny of doom? How could she have done this to humanity in anguish with terrorism becoming such a terrible scourge worldwide and a pestilence in India?

Has she ever heard that a former Prime Minister of India was assassinated on the orders of Prabhakaran for which a young teenager who understood hardly any politics was sacrificed as a suicide bomber? It was this Prime Minister who was able to wrench out of the wily President of Sri Lanka at that time, Junius Jayawardene an excellent solution for the ethnic problem in Sri Lanka. Prabhakaran wanted a mafia state for himself and not a solution to the ethnic problem.

Why is this Arundhati Roy adulation for a monster? This indeed is a very disturbing factor, so much so Arundhati Roy must hang her head in shame. If this is her view, would she have been a suicide bomber herself because it has been claimed that the girls who have taken to this sacrificial monstrosity are full of admiration for Prabhakaran and will undertake any of his bidding?

Her opening lines were self-destructive to her and cast a terrible cloud over her entire feature. They are as follows:

“The horror that is unfolding in Sri Lanka becomes possible because of the silence that surrounds it. There is almost no reporting in the mainstream Indian media — or indeed in the international press — about what is happening there. Why this should be so is a matter of serious concern.

“From the little information that is filtering through it looks as though the Sri Lankan government is using the propaganda of the ‘war on terror’ as a fig leaf to dismantle any semblance of democracy in the country, and commit unspeakable crimes against the Tamil people. Working on the principle that every Tamil is a terrorist unless he or she can prove otherwise, civilian areas, hospitals and shelters are being bombed and turned into a war zone. Reliable estimates put the number of civilians trapped at over 200,000. The Sri Lankan Army is advancing, armed with tanks and aircraft.”

After all she too is basing her feature “from the little information that is filtering through” and then rushes to the conclusion “it looks as though the Sri Lankan government is using the propaganda of the ‘war on terror’ as a fig leaf to dismantle any semblance of democracy in the country.”

She also falls heavily into the trap of claiming that over 200,000 civilians are helpless but without saying why they are in such a state, utters the terrible lie that the “Sri Lankan Army is advancing around with tanks and aircraft” in a manner to give a very mischievous twist to what actually is happening on the ground in Wanni.

The fact that the Sri Lankan Government declared the ‘No Fire Zones’, ceased aerial bombing and also heavy artillery fire and instead opted for ground and virtual door to door operations were conveniently overlooked by Arundhati Roy.

Even more she has overlooked that the LTTE abused the No Fire Zones facilities and on account of that several hundreds of civilians have escaped and that the LTTE has been firing at escapees, children grabbed from the civilians and forced into cadre activities and even grabbing food by Tiger cadres meant for the civilians did not interest this famed journalist.

Shame on her for her to write from such great distance to pay her obvious tribute to the most brutal terrorist since Cambodia’s Pol Pot and a man who made killing his means for terror ascendancy to claim to be the sole voice of the Tamils which was never in any form granted to him.

Perhaps Arundhati Roy was enamoured by the power of revolvers Prabhakaran wore on either side of his gun belt and the awesome muscle and clout with which he inducted himself but without any political ideology whatsoever.

Did she see in him the dominant male that she, perhaps adulated as a role model and in that admiration, lost track of the thousands of deaths he was responsible for directly and indirectly and even risked the survival of the Tamil community in Sri Lanka?

The Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps are not 5-Star Hiltons. They are emergency arrangements and facilities the government provided under extremely hazardous conditions. Schools were commandeered, tents were put up and security was secured and all these in very quick order.

While the government has to ensure food and medical care and other urgent essential needs, it had to ensure that Tiger cadres and suicide bombers did not use this as a conduit to continue their terrorist attacks. And there was also the possibility of suicide bombers attacking the camps as indeed it happened in one case and three others were detected in time by the security forces.

Ever since 1983 there are similar camps in Rameshawaram, Tamilnadu where thousands of refugees from Sri Lanka are still in camps nearly all of them having fled from Tiger terror. Had only Arundhati Roy visited them she would have known that in relation to those camps, the IDP camps in Wanni and around it are 5-Star Hiltons.

So here is a writer of great repute, winner of several international awards and some of them prestigious who falls heavily on all the standards she has achieved in the field of journalism. This is all because, perhaps, she saw in Velupillai Prabhakaran a magical charm that enraptured her.

She has shown with her feature that she is not able to shake this off from her; in her estimation she admires the beauty of the viper to such an extent that she has ignored the deadly poison of its sting. Her feature is a tragedy in the field of journalism that seeks the truth and fights for a cause that serves humanity.

ENDS

-Sri Lanka Guardian

By Dr C P Thiagarajah

(March 31, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) Tamils have been campaigning for a ceasefire for a long period. Government of Sri Lanka (GSL) was intransigent. It couldn't see the forest for its trees. Having ruined Jaffna citizen’s life by their military rampage which had been widely reported, it went on its war path to Vanni.

Having erased Vanni and its head quarters Kilinochchi where the fighters had their de facto government when they signed the famous ceasefire agreement of 2002, the GSL had driven the LTTE and its supporters of the defacto government by herding them with bombs and rockets into a land locked area in Puthukudiyirupu. Because of the fact that India, America, Japan and other countries were seamed forcefully behind the government, giving everything the government wanted, including arms and ammunitions, the government was adamant not to cease fire and carried on the barbaric war and wanted to finish off the Tamils and their freedom fighters, the LTTE. It is a cliff-hanger situation.

The NGO, War Without Witnesses estimate based on first-hand information obtained from government-run hospital authorities, police and judiciary sources in Vanni, the North East Secretariat of Human Rights, aid workers and credible media outlets confirmed more than 3546 innocent Tamils had been killed and more than 8370 injured by Sri Lankan Army (SLA) since January 1 2009.

Without being definite, Sir John Holmes estimated that the civilian casualties continue to be tragically and unacceptably high. However he believed that on average several dozens of people had been killed everyday in February and March. Apart from deaths the HR violations committed during this genocide is beyond intolerable level. This prompted the HRW assistant director Elaine Pearson declare in presenting the 241 page Sri-Lanka HR violations report on 26 March 2009, "President Mahinda Rajapakse ... has now led his government to become one of the world's worst perpetrators of enforced disappearances."

The report found that at least 1,500 disappearances took place between December 2005, when Rajapakse came to power, and December 2007. The 2009 HRW report noted that the disappearances had continued in 2008. "Human Rights Watch is unaware of any serious action by the government to address the hundreds of new ‘disappearances' of the past few years, the great majority of which remain unresolved. Most cases of enforced disappearances implicate government security forces," it stated.

Further, GSL used disproportionate force to overpower the LTTE in their cornered enclave. Artillery and mortar shells hit the safety zone killing numerous civilians during the night. Artillery-fitted cluster munitions exploded between Valaignarmadam and Ampalavanpokka'nai causing heavy casualties. The SLA deployed RPG shells, short range mortars and long distance gunfire on the safety zone during the daytime, in addition to numerous air strikes in the settlements surrounding the Pachchaip-Pulmoaddai junction within the safety zone. Hundreds of bombs were reported dropped by the SLAF that flew low flying sorties. Multi Barrel Rocket Fire (MBRL) was also reported inside the safety zone. The casualties were obviously civilians as the freedom fighters were engaged in fighting and therefore could avoid severe injury and deaths. Owing to indiscriminate bombing there were wanton death and serious injuries to vulnerable groups; children, elderly, expectant mothers and the sickly. The Sri-lankan government had banned NGOs from the Tamil areas unfairly alleging that they were helping the LTTE. It had also clamped down a press gag to avoid any foreign witnesses to its genocide of the Tamils. The war victims were therefore deprived of immediate well trained help and kept out of the world’s watchful eyes. What the Sri-lankan vernacular educated MR should remember was that he could not swim against the tide.

However, they had allowed India to open a hospital in Trincomalee a place that can only be reached after many hours of travel. It was a 115 bed set-up. This hospital is useless for war casualty emergency cases as it was far from the war zone. The hospital was only for name sake to hoodwink the world to show that India was helping Sri-Lanka a democracy that was fighting terrorism when in fact Sri-Lanka is a tyrannical chauvinist racist country.

According to officials, the functioning of the Indian hospital had been a "tremendous success" with the IDPs getting immediate treatment from the set up. In reality, if India stopped the war by its influence then there was no need of any hospitals.

In the event of an increase in the patients from Wanni, India was hoping to open a second hospital at Pulmoddai, near Mullaittivu from where the IDPs patients would be coming in. A 52- member Indian medical team left for Pulmoddai. If the Sri-Lankan government was sincere in its motives they should allow NGO doctors to open a hospital in Pulmoddai. NGO doctors from the West are more advanced technically and therefore efficient than the Indians trained in poorly equipped hospitals.

India should take heed of an Ancient Proverb that said “To everyone is given the key to heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell”. India! do not open the gates of hell. It should advice Sri-Lanka to stop the racist war and stop killing innocent Tamils who were fighting for their right of self determination that was their birth right. By providing medical aid to the injured you were instigating the Sinhala government to kill more and that you would save those who survived the bombs to show the world that Sri-lanka was after all humane. India is walking a tightrope. Mahinda Rajapakse should take to heart what the world’s spark Albert Einstein, the German born American physicist advised “And the high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule, or to impose himself in any other way”. As for the Tamils, however long the night, the dawn will break.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

By G. H. Peiris

"But I had to roll my eyes to see a brochure which described it (Sri Lanka) as a paradise in which ‘different ethnic groups live in total peace and harmony’. Now who could have written that with a straight face?"

Nury Vittachi, ‘The grim truth about all those holiday brochures’.

(March 31, Kandy, Sri Lanka Guardian) I have all along been aware that the author of the article referred to above is a highly acclaimed writer. His exposé of holiday brochures last week was no doubt intended to serve the innocuous purpose of giving us yet another dose of light entertainment for which he has acquired considerable fame. Yet his not-so-humorous comment on Sri Lanka prompted me to engage in the usual ‘surfing’ in order to learn a little more about him. My search was productive in the sense that I did come across information and insights that relate crucially to the observations made in this brief essay on the relations between the main ethnic groups in our country.

First of all let me, like Nuri Vittachi, engage in some fun and show that eye-rolling hyperbole is not confined to advertising in the tourist trade. For instance, there were these snippets of biographical information which I found enjoyable especially after Vittachi’s demonstration that exaggeration could sometimes be quite funny.

"Around the time of (Nuri) Vittachi’s birth, civil unrest broke out in Ceylon between the Sinhalese majority race and the minority Tamil race, and a strictly enforced communications blackout was in operation. Vittachi’s journalist father Tarzie defied the blackout to write a book about the fighting, which was smuggled to London and published by Andre Deutsch under the title Emergency 58. After receiving death threats, Vittachi’s family fled to Singapore and later settled in Kuala Lumpur".

Here’s a more recent thriller:

"Ignoring the bombs going off in the vicinity, leading lights of English literature from across the globe are meeting in the quaint Dutch-built city of Galle in south Sri Lanka for a four-day bonanza of lectures, readings, panel discussions and book launches. About 600 participants, including 50 from overseas, converged on Galle Wednesday as bombs ripped through a passenger bus and an army personnel carrier killing 28 people in the adjacent Moneragala district…Among the leading figures at Galle this year are Gore Vidal, Vikram Seth, William Dalrymple, Simon Winchester, Shyam Selvadurai, Nuri Vittachi and Carl Muller. Sohba De opted out at the last minute".

It is perhaps unnecessary to comment on this type of "straight-faced" writings except for straightening the record on Tarzie Vittachi’s ‘Emergency 58’. There was, indeed, a press censorship at the time of that upheaval – one based on the realization that much of the mayhem was produced by scurrilous rumour-mongers (which included fringe segments of the local press) but not intended to muffle authentic information on the calamity. The date of purchase noted on the flyleaf of the copy of ‘Emergency 58’ I now have with me is 16 December 1958, which seems to confirm my recollection (then a third-year undergrad at Peradeniya) that there was no restriction on the type of stuff that Tarzie Vittachi produced. About his "fleeing" (or, "being hounded out of") Ceylon, one would like to believe that Vittachi could not have been frightened by "death treats conveyed over the phone" (by whom, I wonder – Sir Oliver? SWRD? rival journalists?). I do recall, however, the mainstream newspapers (probably in 1960) reporting that he was to take up a prestigious directorship of the International Press Institute.

This "peace and harmony" referred to by Nuri Vittachi, it is well known, cannot be considered an absolute and permanent state. At the risk of sounding banal I should mention that there has been greater propensity for political dispute to find expression in communal violence in countries like India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Philippines or Sri Lanka than in, say, Switzerland, Belgium or Canada, although countries that could be placed in this latter set have had such turbulent times in the past. Nuri might have devoted greater attention to this fact had he read his dad’s essay titled ‘Tea and Times Roman’ published in November 1981 in the New Internationalist according to which:

"The communal quarrel in Sri Lanka keeps blowing hot and warm. Except in rare cases of racial flare-ups which die as soon as passions are spent, communal issues are closely interwoven with the fear of economic deprivation. (Here, what he had in mind could have been the contrast between the Kuala Lumpur racial flare-up of 1969 and the escalating ethnic tensions during the early stages of the Jayewardene regime here. But is the racial-communal distinction really valid? No matter, let’s proceed.) And, since economic prospects in libertarian countries are always determined by the class structure of society, the sense of communal deprivation, if not remedied very early, inevitably becomes radicalised into an ideological issue. You can find a close correlation between unemployment, for instance, and the rise of communal tension. Someone has to be blamed for ‘taking our jobs away’. And since the market forces which determine economic activity are too remote to be plausible scapegoats, the stranger in our midst — even if he’s been around since we can remember — will do. That is how it all began, when the gains of the Korean War boom had been dissipated in the mid-fifties. The answers are likely to be found in economic development and the equitable distribution of those gains across the divisions of class, creed, caste and ethnicity".

Or, would Nuri still prefer the world to believe that what has been going on in Sri Lanka during the past two decades makes a mockery of any claim of peaceful co-existence among the country’s ethnic groups? That the ‘LTTE’ is not synonymous with ‘Tamil’, that armed confrontations against the LTTE do not constitute a war waged by the Sinhalese against the Tamils, and that Tiger terror, even in its heyday of ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the north-east in the early 1990s, did not constitute attacks by the Tamil community on other ethnic groups, hardly need reiteration – not now, except perhaps for the benefit of those of the TNA persuasion.

The glimpse we have of Nuri Vittachi’s perception on Sri Lanka’s ethnic relations suggests that he like many others, is being guided largely by the horrors of July 1983. That is perfectly understandable, especially in the case of someone for whom contemporary Sri Lankan affairs probably represent just one shade in a wide spectrum of interests. Those more focused on Sri Lanka should obviously try to acquire a more solid understanding. Admittedly, our own preoccupation with current affairs should not make us forget the lessons from the tragedies of the past. Yet, it would be absurd for us to accept the notion being ardently purveyed by propagandists of the Eelam campaign that what occurred in 1983 was a ‘pogrom’ – an attempt by the Sinhalese to annihilate the Tamils. In this context, our being conscious of the fact that acts of compassion and neighbourly goodwill or those that suggested class solidarity transcending ethnic rivalry (for which there is evidence generated through research) were widespread during the convulsions of 1983 should not be construed as a plea in mitigation of the brutality perpetrated by rampaging mobs.

It is even more important for the post-1983 changes in ethnic relations to be accorded due regard. The violence of July 1983 brought about in its wake a massive displacement (rough estimates place it at about 60,000) of those of the Tamil community from the Greater Colombo area seeking protection either in the Tamil-majority areas of the north or in the hurriedly established security shelters within the city or in the residences of their friends from the other ethnic communities. Some fled to India. Considered against the backdrop of this displacement, subsequent changes in the ethnic composition of the population of this area are of special interest. Though the majority among those so displaced returned to their homes after a lapse of time, it seems that, in the longer term, many among them joined the outflow of migrants (about 300,000) from Sri Lanka to destinations in the ‘West’ on a permanent basis. Despite this loss, there has been a substantial net increase of the Tamil population of Greater Colombo between the census years of 1981 and 2001, in terms of both absolute numbers as well as population ratio. In Colombo District, the percentage of the total population accounted for by the Tamils increased from 11.2 in 1981 to 12.2 in 2001. In absolute numbers this was an increase of 82,365. The increase of the Tamil population in the Colombo Municipal Area alone was 58,291. The city along with the adjacent urban areas of Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia, Kolonnawa and Kotte have accounted for 75,954 (or, 92% of the total district increase).

This increase, moreover, was brought about by the immigration of Tamils into the area from the north-east. As indicated in a post-census publication of the Department of Census & Statistics (2004), out of the total of 206,310 ‘life-time immigrants’ resident in the Colombo city in 2001, 54,732 had migrated from source areas in the north-east, with Jaffna District alone contributing 41,248 to this segment of the population. Of the total of such immigrants from the north-east, almost two-thirds (35,491) had settled down in the city within the 10-year period preceding the census – i.e. after 1991.

Alongside the increase in the minority population ratios of this area, there has been an increase in the Sinhala proficiency among these communities. This is also of some salience to the subject of inter-ethnic coexistence. The census report referred to above shows, for instance, that 71.7% of the Sri Lanka Tamils, 78.4% of the ‘Indian’ Tamils, 84.5% of Sri Lanka Moors , 91.7% of Malays, and 89.0% of Burghers in the age groups of 10 years and above in Colombo possessed (in 2001) the ability to communicate in Sinhala. These percentages are substantially higher than the corresponding estimates recorded at earlier census enumerations, and could be interpreted as representing a pragmatic response of convenience rather than of compulsion involving the dilution of ethnic identity.

There are, of course, many other things that could make the observant tourist feel that the brochure has not hoodwinked him after all. In Sinhalese-Tamil relations, there are the links at the plane of popular religion in the form of similarities in beliefs and value paradigms, complementary rather than conflicting interactions in religious ritual, and shared deities and places of worship. There is, in addition, the overarching religious bond within the Christian churches, confined though it is to about 7% of the country’s population. In politics, some importance should be attached to a trend in the ruling coalition (led by the SLFP – a party that has tended to be associated with an almost exclusive Sinhala-Buddhist electoral base) towards acquiring genuinely ‘united national’ characteristics, drawing support from a formidable array of leaders who could claim to be representatives of their respective communities. In trade and commerce at all levels (but, sadly, not in a few enclaves dominated by king-makers of the underworld) there are no obvious indications of ethnic constrains impacting on enterprises run by Tamils and Muslims. What cannot be ignored or trivialised is that these have survived or acquired increasing prominence over a period during which promotion of communal hatred remained part and parcel of the ‘Eelam’ strategy vigorously pursued here and abroad.

What more could the LTTE have done to instigate a Sinhalese backlash against the Tamils in their midst than massacre thousands of ordinary Sinhalese men, women and children; destroy their most sacred religious site and assassinate scores of their leaders? The fact that this strategy has persistently failed to fulfil expectations for well over a quarter of a century should surely be taken into consideration even in making a passing comment on ethnic relations in Sri Lanka unless, of course, the comment is intended to endorse the main rationalisation of secessionism – namely, that Tamils cannot live in peace and with dignity among the Sinhalese.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

(March 31, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) Allow citizens to remain where they wish to, instead of detentions camps says Former Attorney General of Sri Lanka & Chairman of Australians for Human Rights of the Voiceless , Shiva Pasupati in an appeal to Navi Pillai, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Full Text;
APPEAL TO THE UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

We are Australian citizens who share a deep concern about the escalating civilian crisis in Sri Lanka. We appeal to you to bring about an immediate cease-fire between the Sri Lankan Forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and to induct a United Nations Peace-Keeping Force, to ensure a cessation of hostilities. We also urge that, in the meantime, diplomatic personnel, non-government agencies and independent journalists, be allowed access to the affected areas, so that urgent relief could be provided and there could be a true and independent disclosure and assessment of the prevailing situation.


Foreign and local media have been banned from entering the conflict zones since January 2008, when the government unilaterally withdrew from the Cease-fire Agreement and commenced its military offensive. In fact, the local media have been banned from publishing reports adverse to the government and media persons not complying have been killed or subject to assaults and threats. In the absence of independent reporting, it has not been possible to distinguish between facts and propaganda, disseminated by the parties to the conflict.

We are deeply concerned about the lack of medical staff and personnel of aid agencies, serving the estimated around 300,000 civilians trapped in the conflict zones. In September 2008, the Sri Lankan government evicted United Nations and international aid agencies from these areas.

The departure of the only international and independent witnesses from the conflict areas, has removed the accountability of the parties to the conflict. The Sri Lankan government has also issued orders to doctors and other health staff to leave the conflict areas immediately. We appeal to you to take steps to allow international monitoring and to allow medical and aid agencies unrestricted access to the conflict zones immediately.

In direct violation of the Geneva Convention, civilian hospitals in the conflict zones have repeatedly come under aerial bombing and shelling. Furthermore, on 2 February 2009 the Sri Lankan Defence Secretary, Mr Gotabaya Rajapakse, stated that every place outside a government declared “safe-zone” is a military target and no exception will be given to any places providing medical facilities. We urge you to require the Sri Lankan government to stop the aerial bombing of hospitals and that both parties ensure the safety of the civilians, until a cease-fire becomes operational.

As you are aware, the detentions centres setup by the government, have been described by recognised human rights organizations as concentration camps, in view of the ban on person interned to leave the camps and access to the camps being denied to relatives, media and international organizations. Further statements made by internees who are subject to intense pressure by the armed forces, have been disseminated as voluntary and credible statements.

We, therefore , appeal to you to take such steps as you deem appropriate, to allow citizens to remain where they wish to, instead of compelling them to enter detentions camps and to allow access to them by the United Nations representatives, international aid agencies and the media.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

By Swarnajith Udana

(March 31, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) From a considerable number of organizations there are loud cries for ceasefire. That itself is not a bad idea. Any reasonable person (This excludes LTTE and its supporters.) would want to save civilians. What I cannot see-may be due to lack of military expertise and not being privy to sufficient information- how can a ceasefire save even a single civilian life if the LTTE does not agree to release the civilians during a well determined ceasefire? Do the people who crave for a ceasefire care to tell the Sri Lankan Government how can the civilians be saved even if the LTTE would choose to tighten the noose around the civilians? I am not saying that there are no such methods; the problem is that I cannot perceive such methods due to limitedness of my mind. If any body can show this I will be crying for a ceasefire too since it cuts the noose around the civilians and tightens around the LTTE.

How did our affairs develop into this sorry state that International community at large is blind to these realities? There is no doubt the LTTE is a unique phenomena in the stage of international arena. They are cunning, innovative and resourceful. All these aspects rise from one single black hole; A black hole that usurps all positive human qualities and x-rays only sinister ruthlessness reinforced by no-remorse-no-guilt-no-shame spirituality of True Godly maxims. This is true but are we to believe or say that the LTTE is invincible? Who offered them this invincibility? We can say Masters did. It may be also true. So, if that is the whole truth, nothing but the truth, then aren’t we doomed and accepting that the LTTE is undefeatable?

If we really want to defeat the LTTE militarily and spiritually then we need to look at our roles in granting the LTTE its invincibility. Only by seeing that it is us, more than any body else, who grants the LTTE its divineness then we can empower us to truly take out their invincibility. Otherwise, we will have to wait until the LTTE sheds its invincibility by itself and the Masters take it away. That is not going to happen.

How did we give the LTTE its invincibility? Recently Mr. Thomas Johnpulle writing on Sri Lanka Guardian claimed that Jaffna Tamil people gave up the idea of independence state for economic reasons. Yes it is true that one of them claimed they need 50/50 representation. It is also true that colonial powers had ignited racial friction between the ethnic groups. Even then the Jaffna Tamils choose not to ask for an independent state. (I am not a historian-so I may be wrong here in detail but my basic tenet would still be correct. For that matter, even if I am a historian I may still be wrong regardless my sincerity since even exact sciences cannot claim to achieve absolute truths.) Whatever the situation is it is absolute truth that there was racial disharmony and friction fuelled by colonial powers (This statement does not exonerate Tamils or Sinhalese for keeping the fuel working on themselves.) and still the Tamil people choose (may be reluctantly) agreed to live in one Sri Lanka or Ceylon. Now what did our politicians do quell the fires deep insides of hearts.

Rather they themselves choose to fuel the racial disharmony and sold their souls for foul votes. Dear Sinhalese do not ask what Tamils did or did not do to soothe the situation and nurture National identity among all. If you do then you are surrendering control of yourselves to another group. Dear Tamils do not ask what Sinhalese did or did not do either. You both people need to stand for fairness to all and throw away animalistic tribalistic world view in favour of more humane version of patriotism and ethnic love. If it is impossible to you, then you are choosing war. If we do not choose to change ways of our hearts we are fuelling Sinhalese and Tamil extremist groups. The Sinhala version of LTTE or the upgrade version of LTTE may not be far away. (Please do not interpret this as a support for power devolution, federalism or separatism. In fact some time ago, I happened to be a supporter of separatism or at least federalism. In principle, I am not against separatism or federalism, yet in practical terms federalism or power devolution in racial lines could spell disaster for both Tamils and Sinhalese, is what I believe now.)

It is evident that the LTTE blissfully welcomed 1983 riots. They knew the right buttons to push to make it happen. How did they know? They knew it because they accurately gauged the sentiments of Sinhalese politicians and some segments of Sinhalese population. They did not kidnap our politicians and make them burn the Jaffna Library. Some of our politicians did it voluntarily. The LTTE did not take the hands of Sinhalese mobs and raise those hands and planted them with swords then landed the hands on Tamils to unleash lethal power. Some one is saying even these mobs were led by Tamils (LTTE) themselves. If any Tamil went near by such a mob they would have been killed by the mob instantly. We should not LTTE type games with truth. Why did JR wait so long to address the Nation and ask for calmness? Was it because he was abducted by the LTTE and kept hostage until enough damage was done to satisfy the horrendous plan of the LTTE.

If we want to decimate the myth of LTTE invincibility we need to take control; control of ourselves, that is, not of Tamils. We need to clearly understand how a segments of Sinhalese people themselves ignited racial disharmony. Then Even a larger segment physically or attitudinally follow these sentiments fuelled by racial hatred. If we see this collectively we can free ourselves from this evil and reach out to our Tamil brothers and sisters. Do not leave it to them. Let us be strong assertive and reach out them without yielding. Is this impossible? Alright then we have the luxury of war and suicide bombing.

Upon arrival of this LTTE menace, having helped them to establish themselves as a military power what did our politicians do? The LTTE became a gold mine for some of our ministers and army officers. They let our young people to be slaughtered at the will of the LTTE and virtually sold their corpuses to fill their coffers with dollars. Some of our politicians and army officers made every possible buck from commissions obtained by purchasing ineffective bullets and non-protective bulletproof vests. The list goes on and on. We ornamented the LTTE with the myth of invincibility and we celebrated their invincibility with pious feelings of reverence. We can blame India, NGO and many other evil forces. By doing that what we only do is to hand over the control to somebody else. We are subliminally saying to us “They are so powerful and we are helpless.” For the credit of this current Government, this feeding of one’s own coffers using the beggars wound of the war seems to have almost eradicated. It seems like that now the soldiers are looked after and being well disciplined.

True Sun God may be planning to do a Jim Jones; commit mass murder and suicide as it happened on 18th of November 1976 in Guyana. One may argue this suicide-murder was initiated by the visit of Congressman Leo Ryan. If such a heinous crime happens in the safe zone then some of our masters may be waiting to blame Sri Lanka for initiating the crime by choosing to defend its sovereignty. I wish that True God will have sanity enough not to commit such thing since I cannot bear that harm of this magnitude coming to our brothers and sisters not because some are waiting to tarnish the image of Sri Lanka.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

(March 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Addressing a media briefing at the UNP media unit today ( 30 Mar) , UNP M.P. Lakshman Seneviratne said , UNP is the only party since its inauguration has not changed its policies , color or symbol unlike other parties for political or other gains; and so are its present members . Hence, regardless of what insidious attempts are made by interested Opposition politicians and media sections ,UNP cannot be dismantled or de stabilized, he added..

Referring to various reports attributed to him in some sections of the media , he said , his speeches were given a mischievous twist by these elements to achieve their dastardly ends . It is unfortunate that some Journalists attached to the ‘Irudhina ‘ newspaper are seeking to drive a wedge into the UNP, publishing false and misleading news about some UNP Parliamentarians and the party as these Journalists are working to achieve their personal agendas .

Answering questions regarding the alleged conflicts within the UNP and the statements made by Govt. Ministers like Nimal Siripala De Silva , he stated , the Health Minister has made his Ministry most sick because he wastes his time in gossip mongering instead of solving the Ministry’s gigantic problems . He is a Minister who does in Office what he ought to do at home. No wonder .his Ministry is the most deficient and defective , he noted. In any case , all those who tried to blow the differences, if any out of proportion got blown away finally , to their great disappointment , he asserted.

In conclusion, he urged the media to make reports accurately and fully instead of publishing portions to suit their own ends and agendas.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

(March 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) UNP M.P. Kabir Hashim speaking to the media at the UNP media unit today ( 30 Mar) , said , the UNP had been consistently warning the Govt. against its lopsided fiscal polices and backstreet politics . The Govt . which has been concealing the country’s true dire economic position assuming that it can carry on this way regardless and forever , has led the people into the worst economic plight never witnessed before by the masses in SL’s history.. The Govt . which has been preoccupied with holding elections wasting public funds and gaining cheap manipulated popularity has allowed the country to slide down like what has happened to Zimbabwe.

The Govt. which made all the grandiose promises in the Mahinda Chintana has gone back on all the promises . The Sinhala New Year is round the corner , but what do the people have to enjoy ?, he asked . This year , people’s burning cauldron of problems are boiling over , not the traditional pot of milk that is boiling over, he regretted. For the last three years , the UNP as the main Opposition party has always been warning the Govt. in the sincere interests of the people and the country that it has to mend its fiscal policies , but the Govt. paid no heed , even by passing Parliamentary procedures . The Govt. is now so sunk in foreign and local debts it can hardly breathe .

The Govt. as usual is trying to cover its mismanagement, wastages and inefficiency by holding elections and a profusion of lies . But., not only SL even the whole world is aware that the Rajapakse Govt. has voluntarily driven itself and the country into the worst economic holocaust . Very soon the economy will grind to a dead halt . The Govt. is continuing its borrowing spree only to settle existing debts and the prohibitive interests at which they have been borrowed. In its desperation ,it can hardly think of alleviating the people’s economic hardships or developing the country.

The Govt.’s solution to the economic ills is printing money , borrowing from Peter to pay Paul , and suppressing the true abysmal economic situation thus deepening the country’s economic crises. Being the sole architect of this dismal and disastrous situation , it is unable to disclose the facts to the people, he exclaimed.

Even Zimbabwe President wins elections and continues in power , but , does that mean the Govt. is popular or has solved people’s problems ? he asked.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

(March 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Supreme Court ordered today that a report be submitted on all assets of companies incorporated in the Ceylinco Group of Companies prepared in association with the Attorney General and the Central Bank.

The Supreme Court made the order refusing to accept the assets declaration of the Ceylinco Group of Companies submitted by its chairman in accordance with a previous directive of the Supreme Court.

It its order to the Attorney General, the Supreme Court again reiterated that the Central Bank was legally bound to be responsible and pay back to the public the monies they have deposited in private finance companies.

The Supreme Court made the order when the fundamental rights petitions by 22 depositors of the Golden Key Finance Company were taken up for consideration.

The 22 petitioners had requested the Supreme Court to declare that the Monetary Board of the Sri Lanka Central Bank had a responsibility to ensure the repayment of monies of the public deposited with the Golden Key Finance Company.

The petitions cited the Sri Lanka Central Bank, the Finance Minister, the Golden Key Finance Company and 17 others as respondents.

The Supreme Court also ordered the Attorney General to inform court on the steps taken on the investigations conducted by the Sri Lanka Central Bank in 2006 utilizing a special investigation unit on unauthorized finance companies.

The Supreme Court also ordered the Attorney General to show cause as to the failure on his part to take action on the recommendations of the special investigation unit with regard to the acceptance of deposits from the public by the Golden Key Finance Company, a subsidiary of the Ceylinco Group of Companies.

The petition, taken up for consideration before a Bench comprising Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva, Shirani Thilakawardena and K. Sripavan, is to be taken up again on April 28.

The Supreme Court ordered all respondents to appear before court on that day.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

(March 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Democratic rights of the people cannot be curtailed under the guise of military operations, says Ranil Wickremasinghe, Opposition leader.

Addressing a meeting held in Gorakana, Paradura on Saturday, the Opposition leader said that terrorism had to be completely eradicated and no one should be allowed to engage in terrorism.

“Security measures should be taken. There is no question about that. By doing that, if the country has to experience a long lasting peace, then we say that a political solution acceptable to all should be found.

“We are saying that the people’s democratic rights could not be restricted under the guise of the conflict and operations carried out by the security forces. We are working accordingly. I won’t say how we will do it. That is another issue,” Mr. Wickremasinghe said.

Reiterating his call for the establishment of the Constitutional Council, Mr. Wickremasinghe asked as to why the Constitutional Council was not established to ensure good governance.

“Names have been given. The courts have approved them. Why are they dragging this matter for the last three to four years,” he queried.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

By B. Raman

(March 30, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) The commando-style suicidal raid by a group of unidentified terrorists into the heavily-guarded Police Academy at Manawan in the Lahore area on March 30, 2009, should be of concern to India and the rest of the international community for two reasons. Twenty police personnel are reported to have been killed in the raid into the police academy and its occupation by a group of 10 to 12 terrorists. The occupation lasted seven hours before the para-military forces intervened and terminated it. According to the Pakistani authorities, four terrorists died and six have been captured.

The first reason is the renewed use by the Pakistan-based terrorists of the old modus operandi of commando style swarm attacks with hand-held weapons. The first of these attacks was seen in Mumbai from November 26 to 29,2008, the second in Kabul on February 11,2009,and the third on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore on March 3,2009. The fourth has now been seen in the Lahore area at Manawan, about 12 kms from the Indian border in the Wagah sector. While the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) of Pakistan was found to have been responsible for the Mumbai attack, the Afghan and Pakistani authorities have not been able to establish the identity of the organisation or organisations behind the Kabul and the March 3 Lahore attacks. Rehman Malik, the Pakistani Internal Security Adviser, has voiced the suspicion that the Pakistani Taliban must have been responsible for the Manawan attack. Although the Pakistani authorities claim to have arrested six of those involved in the Manawan attack, they have not yet been able to establish their identity.

The second reason for concern arises from the possibility that if it was so easy for a group of 10 to 12 terrorists wearing police uniforms and wielding assault rifles to raid and occupy for seven hours a heavily-guarded establishment like the Police Academy in the Lahore area, it should be equally easy for a similar group to raid and occupy a Pakistani nuclear establishment. The terrorists have repeatedly seen in Kabul and Lahore how easy it is to surprise and overwhem at least temporarily the security personnel guarding the buildings targeted by them. More such incidents involving a similar MO are to be apprehended. We in India cannot remain complacent thinking wishfully that what happened in Lahore cannot happen in India. It can--- and it did in Mumbai.

However, it must be said to the credit of the Indian security forces that commando-style attacks with hand-held weapons on hard, heavily-guarded targets have invariably been beaten back by the security forces guarding them. One could cite as examples the unsuccessful terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament House in New Delhi in December,2001, on the Akshardam Temple in Ahmedabad in September,2002, and on the training centre of the Central Reserve Police Force in Rampur in Uttar Pradesh in January,2008. The terrorists succeeded temporarily in Mumbai because the buildings targeted by them were private establishments, which were soft targets with no protection of trained security forces.

The only similarity between the Mumbai attack and the Manawan attack is the resort by the terrorists to commando-style suicidal attacks. There are some differences. The first difference is that at Mumbai --- as subsequently in Kabul--- the terrorists attacked multiple targets, whereas in Lahore on March 3 and in Manawan on March 30, the terrorists attacked a single target. The second difference is that at Mumbai the terrorists attacked innocent civilians, including foreigners, in unprotected soft areas, but in Kabul and Manawan, the terrorists attacked heavily protected public servants---- the personnel of the jail department at Kabul and policemen and polifce cadets at Manawan. The Sri Lankan cricketeers, though civilians, were heavily protected. Despite this, the terrorists managed to attack them and get away.

It should be of great concern to the international community that none of the major terrorist strikes of the last two years in Pakistan have been successfully detected by the Pakistani intelligence and police though they claimed to have identified the suspects and arrested some of them. Among the major undetected cases are the unsuccessful attempt to kill Benazir Bhutto at Karachi on October 18,2007, her assassination at Rawalpindi on December 27,2007, the explosion in the Marriott Hotel of Islamabad in September,2008, and the March 3 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team at Lahore.

Is this string of undetected major cases merely an indicator of police incompetence or , more ominously, is this also due to the complicity of elements from the Police and the military-intelligence establishment with the perpetrators of the attacks?

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )

-Sri Lanka Guardian

( March 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Visitors to the Sigiriya Rock Fortress would not be allowed to proceed beyond the Lion’s Paw, the Central Cultural Fund said.

“The decision was taken after repeated attacks by wasps on visitors to the rock,” said officials of the Sigiriya Projects Office.

Despite the restrictions, visitors still have the opportunity of viewing the frescoes.

“However, a special programme has been launched to protect visitors from wasp attacks,” said G. L. Samarasinghe, Secretary of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

Tamilnet laps it up like timely manna from heaven

(March 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Tamilnet seizes an Arundhati Roy feature and makes many miles out of it to deliver her view, to say the least, attacking from a blind corner at targets that are imagined. Arundhati Roy’s partiality to Velupillai Prabhakaran is well known even, one might say some kind of admiration which is hard to accept based on the horrendous ruthless track of the Tiger leader.

While we present Roy’s feature that appeared in the Times of India, we are publishing a comment on it by Chithra Karunakaran of the Ethical Democracy as Lived Practice. Reference: http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Ethical Self, the Sovereign State & the Public Sphere

There are perils in the construction of the Ethical Self. Arundhati Roy is a case in point. In her careful but subjectively selective defense of various causes, she occasionally develops a blind spot while navigating the public sphere of South Asian or other regional civil society claims validations.

This gives me pause. It shows the construction of the ethical self in the public sphere of civil society is fraught with peril and is by definition, a field of ethical trial and error (see Roy article below, Times of India copyright). WE in civil society are ALL vulnerable in our self-construction as ethical actors in the public sphere of the sovereign state. That is why DEMOCRACY is ALWAYS a work in progress, a work in progress and that ethical work of participation, vigilance, and self correction is never done.

My comment in response to Arundhati Roy's analysis of the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka:

Is Arundhati Roy reporting from Velupillai Prabhakaran bunker? Does this piece account for the entangled history of the Buddhists, Tamils, Muslims, Christians Burgers, Marxists, and other splinter groups in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon?

Did a female LTTE cadre blow up India's Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in Chennai? Going back in time, Was SWRD Bandarnaike, free Ceylon's first Prime Minister who converted to Buddhism from Anglican Christianity, assassinated by a Buddhist monk? Were his wife, Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandarnaike and his daughter Prime Minister Chandrika Kumaratunga and her husband Vijaya Kumaratunga also targeted by earlier affiliates of what is know known as the LTTE, in assassination attempts and killed or grievously injured? Were scores of ethnic Buddhist political leaders as well as TAMIL political moderates injured or killed in assassination attempts by the LTTE cadres over the part 50 years?

Roy is on the wrong side of history on this one.

Prabhakaran and the LTTE have been sowing the killing fields in Sri Lanka for the past several DECADES, not just days. The LTTE perfected suicide bombing; ethnic cleansing of Buddhists; capture and deployment of TAMIL child soldiers; TAMIL civilians, especially women as human shields, and other crimes against humanity. The LTTE sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind of Sri Lankan govt. action.


Without a doubt there is a grave humanitarian crisis in that beautiful part of our South Asia region, where social justice once prevailed, and Sri Lanka once ranked high on the UN's HDI index. But the LTTE (roughly equivalent to LeT) is responsible for these earlier crimes as well as the current escalation. I was in Colombo traveling with my young sons, days after the LTTE bombed the airport, several years ago.

It looked and smelled like the bathtub where the World Trade Center Towers once stood. That's terror for you and Roy cannot justify writing about it from her safe haven in New Delhi! I also live part of the year in Chennai and the Tamil political leaders in the DMK and the PMK have milked the LTTE sob story of Govt. retaliation for all it's worth. (I don't mean the innocent Tamil civilians who are the main sufferers from LTTE terror, and now state-sponsored terror by the Sri Lankan military).

Chitra Karunakaran

Arundhati Roy: "Colossal humanitarian tragedy"

Arundhati Roy once commented: "I know of very few people outside of Prabhakaran’s followers who want such a state to come into being. This is partly because Prabhakaran is an old-fashioned totalitarian leader and partly because a tiny, Tamil-majority statelet on a small island doesn’t feel like a rousing cause."

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 March 2009, 00:52 GMT] Pointing an accusing finger at the Indian Government for silence on the unfolding tragedy in Sri Lanka, Arundhati Roy, writer and activist, in an article appearing in Times of India says, "while the killing continues, while tens of thousands of people are being barricaded into concentration camps, while more than 200,000 face starvation, and a genocide waits to happen, there is dead silence from this great country [India]. It’s a colossal humanitarian tragedy. The world must step in. Now. Before it’s too late."

Full text of Roy's Times of India article follows:

The silent horror of the war in Sri Lanka

Arundhati Roy

The horror that is unfolding in Sri Lanka becomes possible because of the silence that surrounds it. There is almost no reporting in the mainstream Indian media — or indeed in the international press — about what is happening there. Why this should be so is a matter of serious concern.

From the little information that is filtering through it looks as though the Sri Lankan government is using the propaganda of the ‘war on terror’ as a fig leaf to dismantle any semblance of democracy in the country, and commit unspeakable crimes against the Tamil people. Working on the principle that every Tamil is a terrorist unless he or she can prove otherwise, civilian areas, hospitals and shelters are being bombed and turned into a war zone. Reliable estimates put the number of civilians trapped at over 200,000. The Sri Lankan Army is advancing, armed with tanks and aircraft.

Meanwhile, there are official reports that several ‘‘welfare villages’’ have been established to house displaced Tamils in Vavuniya and Mannar districts. According to a report in The Daily Telegraph (Feb 14, 2009), these villages ‘‘will be compulsory holding centres for all civilians fleeing the fighting’’. Is this a euphemism for concentration camps? The former foreign minister of Sri Lanka, Mangala Samaraveera, told The Daily Telegraph: ‘‘A few months ago the government started registering all Tamils in Colombo on the grounds that they could be a security threat, but this could be exploited for other purposes like the Nazis in the 1930s. They’re basically going to label the whole civilian Tamil population as potential terrorists.’’

Given its stated objective of ‘‘wiping out’’ the LTTE, this malevolent collapse of civilians and ‘‘terrorists’’ does seem to signal that the government of Sri Lanka is on the verge of committing what could end up being genocide. According to a UN estimate several thousand people have already been killed. Thousands more are critically wounded. The few eyewitness reports that have come out are descriptions of a nightmare from hell. What we are witnessing, or should we say, what is happening in Sri Lanka and is being so effectively hidden from public scrutiny, is a brazen, openly racist war. The impunity with which the Sri Lankan government is being able to commit these crimes actually unveils the deeply ingrained racist prejudice, which is precisely what led to the marginalization and alienation of the Tamils of Sri Lanka in the first place. That racism has a long history, of social ostracisation, economic blockades, pogroms and torture. The brutal nature of the decades-long civil war, which started as a peaceful, non-violent protest, has its roots in this.

Why the silence? In another interview Mangala Samaraveera says, ‘‘A free media is virtually non-existent in Sri Lanka today.’’

Samaraveera goes on to talk about death squads and ‘white van abductions’, which have made society ‘‘freeze with fear’’. Voices of dissent, including those of several journalists, have been abducted and assassinated. The International Federation of Journalists accuses the government of Sri Lanka of using a combination of anti-terrorism laws, disappearances and assassinations to silence journalists.

There are disturbing but unconfirmed reports that the Indian government is lending material and logistical support to the Sri Lankan government in these crimes against humanity. If this is true, it is outrageous. What of the governments of other countries? Pakistan? China? What are they doing to help, or harm the situation?

In Tamil Nadu the war in Sri Lanka has fuelled passions that have led to more than 10 people immolating themselves. The public anger and anguish, much of it genuine, some of it obviously cynical political manipulation, has become an election issue.


It is extraordinary that this concern has not travelled to the rest of India. Why is there silence here? There are no ‘white van abductions’ — at least not on this issue. Given the scale of what is happening in Sri Lanka, the silence is inexcusable. More so because of the Indian government’s long history of irresponsible dabbling in the conflict, first taking one side and then the other. Several of us including myself, who should have spoken out much earlier, have not done so, simply because of a lack of information about the war. So while the killing continues, while tens of thousands of people are being barricaded into concentration camps, while more than 200,000 face starvation, and genocide waits to happen, there is dead silence from this great country. It’s a colossal humanitarian tragedy. The world must step in. Now. Before it’s too late.
ENDs

-Sri Lanka Guardian

By R. Swaminathan

(March 30, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) Despite some scholarly references to the practise of different forms of grassroots democracy in India in pre-historic times, the origin of India’s modern democratic experiment can be traced to the British reaction to the events in 1857. Since then, except for the hiccup during 1975-77, the citizens of India have been increasingly participating in their own governance and the procedures have been evolving at their own pace, with their fine tuning still in progress. Further, the twin processes of striking a delicate balance between centralization and decentralization, as well as the power elites in society serving their own interests without totally excluding those on the margins continue.

Indian Democracy

India, the largest functional democracy in world history, is now in the midst of its 15th parliamentary election under the constitution “we, the people” gave unto ourselves after the British colonial rule ended in 1947. Nearly 715 million voters (by far in excess of the population of most countries) will be able to exercise their franchise, as compared to the 170 million voters at the first general election in 1952.

During the colonial era, hereditary leadership and the use of money and muscle power to establish the principle of “might is right” was encouraged and even instigated. It is unfortunate that some of that legacy continues even today.

India is one of the few countries where universal adult franchise, including for women, was guaranteed from the very first election held under the new constitution. The immensity of this measure can be appreciated when we remember that yesterday (25 March) was the 44th anniversary of the historic 25,000-strong march led by Martin Luther King to the State Capitol in Montgomery (Alabama), demanding voting rights for blacks.

Yet, Indian democracy is not without its own serious fault-lines. Anyone who is following the “Lead India ‘09” campaign in the Times of India should be aware of most of these fault-lines and deficiencies. Some pessimists may argue that these represent the failure of the system. I feel, however, that the mere fact that the fault-lines and possible variations can be identified and discussed in public is an indication of the strength and vibrancy of Indian democracy. Open debates have been held about parliamentary vs. presidential forms of democracy; about first-past-the-post vs. some kind of proportional representation; criminalization of politics; pandering to vote-banks; “none of the above” vote etc. The transparency of the election process and the disclosures required to be made by candidates has been increasing steadily. The independence and impartiality of the Election Commission of India has not been doubted.

The progress of the democratic experiment in India, despite all the shortcomings, should be a matter of pride (without arrogance) for all Indians – particularly the manner in which the armed forces have kept out of politics and religion plays only a peripheral role in the elections. It should be a model for many countries to emulate.

Our Neighbourhood

The situation in countries neighbouring India would be discussed by area specialists, but I would like to note some of the salient developments in the recent past. Bhutan is taking her first steps towards a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system. Nepal has shaken off royal autocracy and has restored parliamentary democracy. Maldives has had an orderly transfer of power after a fair and free election (for the first time?). Pakistan and Bangla Desh have come out of military rule and are having duly elected governments, though both democracies are under continuing threats from the military and the religious fundamentalists. China continues on its chosen path of a single-party people’s democracy and Sri Lanka continues to pursue its majoritarian style. Myanmar, of course, continues to be ruled unabashedly by a military junta.

The different stages of democratic development in our neighbouring countries, whether or not they are acceptable to the Indian psyche in altruistic terms, have not had any significant impact on India’s regional policies and those towards our neighbours. India has avoided the tempting pitfall of being self-righteous about its democracy and trying to “export” it. India recognizes that each country has to develop its own systems according to its genius and its realistic conditions. India’s commitments to democracy and human rights are normally kept within the limits of “gentlemanly dialogue” and do not extend to intervention in the internal affairs of another country. At the same time, India does not shirk its responsibilities when its own security and other interests are severely jeopardized.

India has become mature and confident enough to place her national interests first and adopt responsible and pragmatic international policies. Ideological approaches based on socialism and non-alignment, which characterized our earlier policy-making process, do not seem to be too relevant now.

Conclusion

While complacency is not justified, I feel that India’s democratic experiment is progressing fairly satisfactorily. It is a sign of maturity and strength that differences in the systems of governance are not allowed to have any major impact in our neighbourhood policy. It would, however, be better if the political parties could try for consensual evolution of national foreign and security policies.

(This paper was prepared by R.Swaminathan, Former Special Secretary, DG (Security), Government of India for presentation on 26 March 2009 at the National Seminar on “Democracy in South Asia : Challenges and Responses”, organized at Pondicherry, by the Centre for South Asian Studies (Department of Politics and International Studies, Pondicherry University) and the Center for Asian Studies (Chennai).

-Sri Lanka Guardian