Beginning of international war crimes probe?
Posted on August 19th, 2016
Editorial Courtesy The Island
August 18, 2016, 12:00 pm
The Northern Provincial Council (NPC) is making the most of the increasing impotency of the state to run a parallel government of sorts in the northern parts of the country; it is also working overtime to annex the Eastern Province to the North. Chief Minister C. V. Wigneswaran and others of his ilk are all out to gain legitimacy for their political project with the help of foreign powers. Hardly a day passes without a foreign dignitary visiting the North and entertaining appeals from the NPC members and doing a Dixit.
The New Indian Express has quoted CM Wigneswaran as having said US Ambassador Atul Keshap acceded to his request that some of the rehabilitated LTTE cadres be examined by American doctors who are currently here to find out whether the former Tigers were injected with poisonous substances during their rehabilitation programme. The US Ambassador has, according to him, said its medical team can examine some of the former LTTE members and decide what to do next. The US embassy in Colombo has given an evasive answer to our questions on the issue; it has not contradicted Wigneswaran’s statement. Doubts that Wigneswaran et al have created in the minds of people, both here and abroad, need to be allayed and the best way to do so is for a team of medical experts to examine the former LTTE combatants. But, that is a task for the government of Sri Lanka and not Washington.
Interestingly, CM Wigneswaran’s allegation reminds us of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s claim, in 2011, that the US could be responsible for a spate of cancer among South American leaders. While battling cancer himself the Venezuelan leader alleged that the US had ‘invented a technology to spread cancer’, and warned other left-wing leaders in neighbouring countries that they could be targeted next. Several other South American political leaders including suspended Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and the then President of Paraguay Fernando Lugo were struck by cancer. But, Chavez’s allegation went unprobed.
The government should have acted promptly when Wigneswaran and other TNA grandees made the aforesaid allegation. This country is not short of good doctors and a team of local medical specialists including those named by the TNA should have been appointed to examine the LTTE cadres who have been reunited with their families after rehabilitation. The government could have sought foreign assistance if the need for that had arisen in respect of tests etc.
The Northern Chief Minister’s claim at issue is tantamount to a very serious war crimes allegation. (Injecting anything harmful into prisoners of war is a war crime, isn’t it?) And, if the US examines former LTTE cadres as it has reportedly promised, its action will amount to conducting a war crimes probe in all but name. In other words, the NPC will succeed in having a war crimes investigation initiated with foreign involvement therein; Wigneswaran and others will have beaten the UNHRC to it in such an eventuality and one may be justified in arguing that the medical camps the US held in the North were only a smokescreen.
Whether the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government will pluck up the courage and seek an explanation from the US on this score without taking it lying down remains to be seen. We bet our bottom dollar that it will resort to some face saving tactics as it is too pusillanimous to confront the western powers.
The army insists that none of the LTTE suspects were ill-treated and all of them were rehabilitated properly and reunited with their families under the supervision of eminent members of their community. About 12,000 LTTE cadres who either surrendered or were captured during the war underwent rehabilitation. However, the critics of the Sri Lankan military may not buy into the army’s claim. Now that the US has undertaken the examination of some of the former LTTE cadres, according to Wigneswaran, the onus is on Washington to reveal the findings of its investigations if it fulfils its promise to the Northern CM; the US medical experts will also be in position to tell the international community whether the LTTE suspects held at rehabilitation centres have been tortured in the same way as the Guantanamo Bay inmates. The world must know the truth.
August 19th, 2016 at 12:06 pm
LTTE tortured their own Tamil civilians to get them to join up as members of the LTTE !
Even though the LTTE was removed and P’karan is no more, will any of these surviving LTTE people say exactly who tortured them, if there are signs of torture ?
How are such problems going to be sorted out by any medical team from anywhere ?
Also, what about the 300,000 plus Tamil civilian Human Shield of the LTTE, saved by the Armed Forces of Lanka ? No praise on that costly maneuver for the Armed Forces of Lanka ?
August 19th, 2016 at 2:57 pm
Recently a news report was published that Wigneswaran and the NPC was going to setup their own NPC Office of Missing Persons because they cannot trust the Office of Missing Persons of the national government!
Once again, the NPC is beginning to act like a Sovereign Government not subject to any laws of the National Government of Sri Lanka.
Here we are, 7-years after the demise of PRABHAKARAN and the destruction of his “Sovereign Eelam” and we are BACK TO SQUARE ONE with Wigneswaran and the NPC!
Patriots have REPEATEDLY WARNED both MR/UPFA and the Yamapalanaya government that this WILL BE THE DIRECTION these Separatists will head if they are given any shelter under the 13A, and that prediction is coming to fruition.
It is HIGH TIME that Wigneswaran was ARRESTED, PROSECUTED, CONVICTED and EXECUTED for HIGH TREASON. His collaborators in this venture should be similarly convicted and imprisoned. The NPC should be temporarily taken over by the GOSL until the 13A is REPEALED and the WHOLE Provincial Council System is PERMANENTLY DISSOLVED!
The Eelam Project is progressing at a pace under the UMBRELLA of the Western Powers hounding Sri Lanka, and it must be HALTED IN ITS TRACKS without delay!
August 20th, 2016 at 2:31 am
This Is How The Office Of The Missing Persons (Which Will Become A Bogus ‘Evidence’ Manufacturing Machine) Manufacture Bogus ‘Evidence’ Of 40,000 Missing Persons To Try Our Brave Armed Forces For So Called War Crimes They Never, Ever Committed
In the Missing Persons Act, a relative or a friend can make an official inquiry (but a totally bogus inquiry) from the Office of the Missing Persons (OMP) by email inquiring as to the whereabouts of their relative or friend.
There are over 8 lakhs to 10 lakhs Tamil diaspora asylum seekers (actually economic migrants), a vast majority of who support the separatist terrorist LTTE and its aim of a separate state. If even 40,000 of these Tamil diaspora who support the separatist terrorist LTTE write bogus emails to the OMP inquiring the whereabouts of their friend or relative (but this friend or relative is actually living alongside them in these countries i.e. the US, UK, EU, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, India etc.) these inquiries will officially be accepted by the OMP as 40,000 missing persons.
According to the provisions of the OMP Act, even if the OMP inquires after these let us say 40,000 and finds out that these are all bogus inquiries and that all these 40,000 persons are actually living alongside the inquirer i.e. their relative or friend and these complaints about these persons being missing are all bogus, the missing persons, now found by the OMP, can request that their whereabouts not be revealed to their relative or friend or be made public. So officially these 40,000 persons will still be missing!!!
Then the OMP will use these bogus 40,000 missing persons (who are actually living comfortably in the US, UK, EU, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, India etc.) as manufactured ‘evidence’ that war crimes happened in Sri Lanka (and all these bogus inquirers will state that these persons went missing during the 2006-2009 period) and our Sri Lankan Armed Forces will be persecuted for committing war crimes that they never, ever committed by a judicial process using these bogus email inquiries.
The Missing Persons Act states specifically that if the missing person who is now found requests that the fact that they are now found not be revealed to the public that person will remain as missing as far as the OMP is concerned. That is how the OMP will manufacture bogus ‘evidence’ of 40,000 missing persons so that the Sri Lankan Armed Forces can be persecuted for committing bogus war crimes.
The OMP emails cannot be checked by any outside body as stated in the Act since all evidence (almost all bogus) gathered by the OMP remains confidential. The OMP cannot be taken to the Supreme Court on this issue. However the OMP should absolutely and immediately be taken to the Supreme Court regarding what has been written above which is what would happen when this OMP is set up.
The OMP will become a bogus ‘evidence’ manufacturing machine which will gather such bogus inquiries via email from those members of the Tamil diaspora who are supportive of the LTTE terrorists and who will send bogus email inquiries by their thousands. All these bogus inquiries (of people who are actually living in the US, UK, EU, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, India etc.) will then be misused as missing person inquiries.
I did not realize that the Sinhalese were this stupid as to allow such a process within the Missing Persons Act which can be blatantly misused in order to manufacture bogus ‘evidence’ like this. The OMP process is not transparent, it will happen in total secrecy, no one in Sri Lanka will be able to question it, not our police, not our courts, not our Sri Lankan citizens, nobody. All the OMP will do is gather bogus email ‘evidence’ such as described above which will then be misused as missing person inquiries to try the Sri Lankan Armed Forces for bogus war crimes that they never, ever committed.
The OMP process as described above must be stopped immediately. If a relative or a friend really and genuinely wants to find out about their genuinely missing relative or friend (i.e. perished LTTE terrorist), they can make a complaint to the OMP in person in public. This is the only way that Sri Lanka and the world will know that their inquiry is genuine. This was the methodology followed by the earlier Paranagama Commission which then received 23,000 complaints from relatives or friends of the missing person (i.e. perished LTTE terrorist or our perished Sri Lankan Forces soldiers) but they made their complaint in public in person to the commission. This is the only way to ensure authenticity and make the process transparent since this happens in the public arena. However, even with such safeguards, even some of those complaints may have been bogus.
The OMP should be stopped immediately since it is not a transparent process at all as described above but a totally secretive process where no one and nobody can request to be provided an opportunity to even peruse, investigate or look at the email inquiries received by the OMP. If the UNHRC, the US, UK, EU, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, India, the TNA and the separatist terrorists genuinely want to find out about perished LTTE terrorists, this Yahapalanaya Government could expand and extend the scope of the already set up Paranagama Commission in order to make such inquiries. This process should be totally following Sri Lankan Law, within Sri Lankan jurisdiction, paid for totally by the Sri Lankan Government only and with only Sri Lankan citizens appointed as commission members and investigators. In fact the entire staff should be composed of Sri Lankan citizens only. The process should be a totally domestic process with no interference or input whatsoever from foreign countries. Most importantly, all complaints should be made in person by relatives and friends in public if their complaint is genuine.
The Missing Persons Act is totally dangerous as pointed out above and should be dismissed totally as it is highly dangerous and a totally secretive process as described above designed and set up to manufacture bogus ‘evidence’ against the Sri Lankan Armed Forces.