Twin bombings at Volgograd
Posted on December 30th, 2013
Dr. Chula Rajapakse MNZM Spokesperson, United Sri Lanka Assn,
Dear Editor,
The irony is that the reward the British Prime minister bestowed on the Sri Lankan President for putting an end to this carnage in may 2009, is to threaten to haul him & his country before the UNHRC in March 2014 for allegations of war crimes by his troops during the last weeks of putting an end to this Tiger terror.
It is an open secret that these allegations originated from the Tiger diaspora, funders of this terror, many of whom enjoy safe havens especially in Britain despite these war crimes and wield the heavy stick of deciding votes in key marginal electorates, to whose tune the British PM sang his threats at the recent CHOGM.
Whilst Prime Minister Tony Abbot along with NZ PM John Key , are owed plaudits no end for their balanced stand, events like the bombings in Volgograd, emphasize that they should do what it takes to veer the British PM away from his unconscionable stand.
Dr. Chula Rajapakse MNZM
Spokesperson,
United Sri Lanka Assn,
Lower Hutt , New Zealand
December 30th, 2013 at 6:32 pm
Dear readers, please also read the following two editorials from the Island and the Daily News.lk respectively which are related to Dr. C. Rajapakse’s letter to the Australian newspaper.
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Britain’s can of worms
December 30, 2013, 8:03 pm
The British government is planning to declassify some documents pertaining to private talks between Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George Bush in the run-up to the Iraq war, according to a news item we publish in today’s World View section. This move is aimed at facilitating the publication of the much-delayed Chilcot report on Britain’s involvement in that conflict, we are told.
It is more than ten years since the conclusion of the Iraq war and Britain has not yet made public the findings of its inquiry despite its responsibility for killing hundreds of thousands of people including children. Egyptian Nobel laureate and former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed Mustafa ElBaradei, has observed in his internationally acclaimed book, The Age of Deception, Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times: “The harshest reality of the Iraq War and its extended aftermath––an aspect that has been disturbingly minimised in Western media reports––is the Iraqi civilian loss of life. Estimates have ranged as high as eight hundred thousand Iraqi deaths during the first three years of the war. This does not count the millions maimed or wounded, or the millions displaced from their homes and stripped of their livelihoods.” One cannot but agree with the respected international civil servant on his assertion that ‘the United States and its allies promoted an ethos of violence and cultural division that harkened back to an earlier era of human history’.
But, Britain continues to sit on the Chilcot report to appease the US, which does not want it published for obvious reasons, while urging other countries to probe their accountability issues in a transparent and credible manner and prosecute the perpetrators. This, the UK does in spite of the fact that the documents that the US and the UK submitted to the IAEA, in support of their claim that Saddam Hussein had obtained uranium from Niger, sufficient to produce 100 nuclear bombs, were all fabricated. Even Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has declared in the British Parliament itself that the Iraq war was illegal.
The much-publicised move to declassify documents detailing Bush-Blair talks has, in our book, all the trappings of a ruse to delay the release of the Chilcot report and divert international attention. A British government official has been quoted as saying that their plan is to declassify many of the records and be ‘as open as possible’. Who will decide how open the process should be? It is Prime Minister David Cameron and his Cabinet. This is ludicrous, to say the least. The need is for complete transparency and no room should be left for incriminating documents to be deep-sixed on some flimsy pretext.
In fact, Britain, which is on a global campaign to have alleged atrocities against civilians in conflicts probed and war criminals punished, should have set an example by launching a full-scale war crimes probe into the allegations against its own troops and wartime Prime Minister Blair.
ElBaradei has posed some very pertinent questions as regards the Iraq war: “Should the United Nations request an opinion from the International Court of Justice as to the legality of the Iraq War? If the answer is that the war was, in fact, illegal––and moreover, if consideration is given to the massive civilian casualties incurred––should not the International Criminal Court investigate whether this constitutes a ‘war crime’ and determine who is accountable? Should Iraq request reparations at the International Court of Justice, or another forum, for the damages incurred during a war launched in violation of international law and on the basis of falsehoods?” These questions need to be discussed and answers found. Geneva is the best place for that purpose, we reckon.
When Britain appointed Sir John Chilcot to investigate its involvement in the Iraq war on Blair’s watch it may not have expected the issue to get out of hand in this manner. Prime Minster David Cameron, the self-appointed crusader hunting for war criminals, has cut a very pathetic figure.
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THE LAST WORD
We carry as our lead story today on page 1, the Queen’s assertion in her Christmas message that essentially all is well with the Commonwealth, and that the organization is ‘a family.’ This certainly goes against Mr. David Cameron’s Imperial attitude towards the organization, but it is the Queen and not Mr. Cameron, unfortunately for the UK PM, that is the Head of the Commonwealth.
The Queen is titular? It is not for nothing that she is the Head of the Commonwealth, for anyone who thinks the Queen’s role is symbolic. What she says on the contrary had been the rule in the Commonwealth, for a long time, and history shows that she has countermanded the wishes of many former British premiers such as Edward Heath for example, and done what she wanted, with regard to most thorny issues that faced her as the Head of the Commonwealth.
This says that invariably, the British government has to fall in line — and that inevitably the tough posture of some of the belligerents of the Commonwealth towards Sri Lanka, which of course is a bluff, has to be called off.
This truth was known for a long time; i.e.; that the Commonwealth cannot exist as a viable entity if there are some members that feel they are more equal than others. The Queen’s speech however would put an end to the speculation, and it seems that the British newspapers are now willing to take the initiative in calling the bluff of their government in this regard.
The Telegraph for instance, in which the article quoted today in our newspaper appears, has taken the British Foreign Office Establishment to the cleaners so to say, squarely debunking the attitude of some of the BCO (British Commonwealth Office) mandarins towards fellow Commonwealth member states of Africa for instance.
The attitude of the BCO is symptomatic of the general disposition of the same club of nations to which Britain so often gives the lead. As one writer observed over the weekend, there is a cottage industry for example of tribunals that are funded by Western nations that have been instituted to go into so called war crimes issues in several developing countries. But the same countries that provide the wherewithal for these tribunals are loathe to consider themselves as benefitting from that kind of litigation as well.
There was the statement made famously by a onetime British Foreign Secretary that the World Court was not designed to bring either the US or UK before it! Pity that the UN does not have a Queen to call this variety of bluff – but certainly the British monarch’s statement on the Commonwealth will impact positively on how the British at least, and some of the Commonwealth member states that now seek an adversarial relationship within world bodies with constituent member nations, will in future judge their external relations.
Some pundits have written in local weekend newspapers chastising not just the Rajapaksa government but also the Lake House newspapers for seeking to tell Mr Cameron that he overstepped his remit when he was here in Sri Lanka for CHOGM. What would they want to say now — that the Queen was wrong and that she should be chastened by the British premier as well?
Mr. Cameron is supposed to have made some kind of finger-wagging ultimatum when he was here and some Sunday newspaper columnists now say that the Sri Lankan government had therefore better beware.
The fact is that Mr Cameron’s ultimate decisions concerning Sri Lanka will inevitably be informed by the astute thinking of the Head of the Commonwealth, the Queen, who is still sovereign in Britain if anybody had not noticed. Mr Cameron may still want his Tamil votes, but that does not mean that he wouldn’t have to suitably temper his position on Sri Lanka at international forums notwithstanding his previous grandstanding on the issues.
– See more at: http://dailynews.lk/editorial/last-word#sthash.VL248jbQ.dpuf
December 31st, 2013 at 2:30 pm
Dr.Chula Rajapakse……It is time Australia proscribe LTTE/TAMIL organizations mascarading in different names to fund raise & other illegal activities, be BANNED as a Terror organization. Many other countries in EU, North America have proscribed LTTE as Terror orgaization.
I am sure with your organization in the forefront, pressure can be brought on Australian Govt. do so.. Thank you for standing up for Sri Lanka…………….J