By : A.A.M.NIZAM – MATARA

The victory achieved by the people of this country on November 16^th by installing Mr. Gotabhaya Rajapaksa as the president of this country and ending the rule of the western servile shameless and spineless Ranil Wickremasinghe has intensified the antipathy to this country by the tyrant western nations (TWNs).  As such there could be continuous activities against Sri Lanka from these western tyrants as what happened in Iran when Prime Minister Mussadeg nationalised oil industry of his country, President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized Suez Canal, President Fidel Castro deposed American backed military dictator FulgencioBatista, Salvador Allende became the elected President of Chile,  Hugo Chavez became the President of Venezuela and similar to what happened in Algeria, Tunesia, Egypt and Libya in the name of regime changes. The government should take all precautions that TWNs will not get the slightest opportunity to reverse the people’s victory of our country.

The travel ban imposed by the shit head nation United States on the Chief of Defence Staff Shavendra Silva and his family should be considered as the tip of the iceberg that may be imposed on this country these by shithead countries, the TWNs.  General Shavendra Silva is a War Hero of whom all Sri Lankans should be proud and thankful of for being one of the Commanders to vanquish terrorism from the soil of this country.  .  Having joined the Army in 1984 he served as the Commander in the terminal war against the terrorists.  He is one of our Commanders together with Kamak Gunaratne and Jagathe Jayasuriya hated by the terrorist diaspora and racist separatists.  Our proud Hero has declared that he doesn’t want to go to U.S. now or in the future. 

The Terrorist National Alliance (TNA) issuing a message has hailed the U.S. action and stated that the U.S. ban confirm that Shavendra Silve was responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity and urged thatthe government should take immediate action to investigate the relevant allegations and mete out due punishments. The racist Wigneswaran f who all these years happily lived among the Sinhalese eating kevum kokis as both his sons are married to Sinhalese ladies and after becoming the Chief Minister of the Northern Province and started eatingThose and Itli and became staunch Tamil chauvinist has also welcomed and expressed happiness about the U.S.ban. 

It is also reported that Quisling Mangala Samaraweera, the old hag Chandrika and the foreign funded NGO bitch Nimalka Fernando have given adversary information continuously about the Commanders of our  Security forces and this travel ban has been imposed based on these information.   Nimalka Fernando is one of the worst enemies of Sri Lanka and she should be charged for treason and banish from the country or subject Kandyan Kings’ roual punishment since she attempted several times during Mahinda Rajapaksa presidency to get Sri Lanka condemned internationally as a Failed State” Ranil Wickremasinghe government rewarded her by appointing her as a member of the Office of Missing Persons (OMP).  Her son is working as the political advisor to the Swiss Embassy in Colombo  and is reported to be facilitating those who attempting to flee the country to get political asylum in Switzerland.  It is queer to understand why these quislings stay in this country if they have no love for the country.  It is better that they go somewhere without acting as pimps prostituting the country.  They deserve to be stoned by the people whenever they come across them like the stray dogs are stoned to chase them out.

The steps taken by the Foreign Minister Dinesh Gunawardene against this travel ban must be appreciated.  He has summoned the American Ambassador Alina B. Teplitz and warned that the US decision to impose travel restrictions on Commander of the Sri Lanka Army and acting Chief of Defence Staff Shavendra Silva and his immediate family had unnecessarily complicated the US-Sri Lanka relations and has asked the United States government to review its decision.

The Minister has reiterated that Lt. Gen. Silva had been appointed the Commander of the Army by former president Maithripala Sirisena, taking into account his seniority and that there were no substantiated or proven allegations of human rights violations against him. Silva’s appointment as the acting Chief of Defence Staff by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was on account of his being the senior most serving military officer.

The Foreign Ministry has stated that Silva had played a major role in combating terrorism and it was disappointing that a foreign government should question the prerogative of a democratically elected President to call upon persons of proven expertise to hold key positions on national security related matters.

Minister Gunawardene has also stated that the travel ban was not based on independently verified information, but on the much disputed Darusman Report of 2015, the Minister has requested the United States to verify the authenticity of the sources of information. It was recalled that the report made clear that it was “a human rights investigation and not a criminal investigation”, and that “the names provided in the description of the chain of command do not imply criminal responsibility for those particularly alleged violations listed in this report, either as direct responsibility or under command or superior responsibility. Individual criminal responsibility can only be determined by a Court of Law with all necessary due process guaranteed,” the Minister has pointed out.  

Ambassador Teplitz has informed the Minister that she would convey the concerns of the government of Sri Lanka to the US government, and reiterated the continued commitment of the US government to all aspects of ongoing collaboration with Sri Lanka in the field of defence, etc.

Meanwhile the Acting Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), and Army Commander, Lt. Gen. Shavendra Silva has denied all allegations of human rights violations made by the US to bar him and his family from entering that country. He has said that everyone now knows the truth about these allegations and he will not personally respond to them since the Foreign Ministry will take necessary action.

He has refused to comment on the impact of the US decision would have on the ongoing military cooperation between the two countries.

Picture of the meeting held by the Minister of Foreign Relations eith the U.S.Ambassador  Alina B.Tepliz at the Foreign ministry Office.  Foreign Secretary Ravinatha Aryasinha, Director General/ North America, Dharshana M. Perera, and officials of the Ministry of Foreign Relations were associated with the Minister at the meeting. Martin Kelly, Deputy Head of Mission, accompanied the US Ambassador.

Sri Lankan patriotic organizations, foreign and local as well as many parliamentarians have vehemently condemned the unwanted issue that had been created by the U.S. shithead government. 

Former Minister Dr. Sarath Amunugama has said that although there is much discussion about the travel ban imposed on Army Commander Shavendra Silva by the US Government, it should not be construed as a serious diplomatic issue. 

He has pointed out that it has been the usual practice as and when presidential elections are held in the US, where the Tamil diaspora uses these trends to force the American Government to take such decisions. However, this type of incident fails to gather momentum to interfere diplomatic relations that exist between Sri  Lanka and the US. This action can be termed as an act of political interference in the face of the forthcoming presidential election in that country. It is a well-known fact that the UNHRC in Geneva is a den of thieves as once said by US President Donald Trump. Dr. Amunugama has further stated that the international human rights organisations cannot interfere in Sri Lankan affairs. It cannot interfere outside the Constitution of our country. There are many declarations saying foreign judges are scheduled to hear cases against acts of any human rights violation. There is no possibility of such steps being taken as our Constitution does not allow those efforts. In this context, it is advisable that there should be a serious study of the 19th Amendment to our Constitution. 19A has curtailed the powers of the executive by not allowing him to hold even a ministerial portfolio thereby weakened the President completely.

The Global Sri Lanka Forum  based in U.K and the Spur of Australia and many organisations of Sri Lankans resident in Europe, Japan and the Middle East have also severely condemned the U.S. government for attempting to create various issues and hinder the progressive measures being taken by the government.  . 

The leader of the Pivithuru Hela Urumaya, Attorney at Law MP Udaya Gammanpila ondemned the United States as the No. 1 war criminal.  He questioned as to which Court of Justice convicted Lt. Colonel Shavendra Silva as a war criminal based on the hearsay charges of the ignominious Darusman report?   Further he stated that America is the world’s biggest war criminal; and posed the following questions to the United States as the only known crime committed by him was wholeheartedly contributing to defeating the tiger terrorists which America said is a ruthless terrorist outfit that cannot be defeated:

• Was it a false pretention that America declared a global operation called War on Terror”?
• Isn’t it America that dropped a Hydrogen Bomb on Hiroshima of Japan and killed 80,000 innocent people and injured more than 70,000 people?
• Dropped another Hydrogen Bomb on Nagasaki and killed 40,000 people and injured over 60,000 people. 
• When the 2^nd world war was over without taking back the remaining bombs to America as it was expensive, dropped them on the Dresden city of Germany and killed more than 25,000 people?
• Killed 3.8 million people in Vietnam by attacking them with chemical and biochemical arms during the Vietnam War?
• Killed over 1.5million people in Iraq and Afghanistan saying that they carrying operations against terrorism?

In fact it America is the war criminal.  Levelling war crime charges against Sri Lanka by the United States is similar to a pot blackened with soot telling a silver pot that you are black.  We would like to tell America try to preach others after you are in the right form, MP Gammanpila said.

The Island editorial dated 17^th February said that the United States and its western allies cannot depend on their nukes and economic prowess to dominate the world any longer. Their rivals have matched their military power, and China’s steady rise as an economic powerhouse is a worrisome proposition for them. Russia has also bounced back, under Putin, and pitted itself against its traditional enemies. So, the western bloc has invented a new weapon to achieve its goal; it has weaponised human rights and uses them selectively to force the developing nations into submission.

The editorial said that the US has banned Commander of the Sri Lanka Army Lt. General Shavendra Silva and his family members from entering its territory and the ban has come like a bolt from the blue with only a few days to go until the UNHRC sessions in Geneva. The State Department has said, among other things: “The allegations of gross human rights violations against Shavendra Silva, documented by the United Nations and other organisations, are serious and credible. His designation underscores the importance we place on human rights in Sri Lanka and globally, our concern over impunity for human rights violations and abuses, as well as our support for promoting accountability for those who engage in such acts.” One is puzzled. The US must be joking! The editorial questioned whether the United States has forgotten what it did Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Haiti, Diego Garcia, Chile, Iran, Iraq, etc.?

The editorial explained that none of the allegations against Shavendra Silva has been substantiated. The US has earned notoriety for its duplicity anent UN and other reports on human rights violations. It has referred to some UN documents in a bid to justify the travel ban at issue. But it once forced the UNHRC to retract a condemnatory statement on Bahrain, an ally of the US and the UK.

It said that when the Goldstone report (prepared by the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict) was issued in 2009, Richard Goldstone, who headed the mission, faced a vilification campaign and was forced to retract the findings unfavourable to Israel and no Israeli military officer was banned from entering the US soil on account of that damning report!

Reminding that the Trump administration has famously called the UNHRC a ‘cesspit of political bias’ and pulled the US out of it in support of Israel, the editorial said that the US  has no qualms about using the same ‘cesspit’ against the countries that resist its attempt to hold suzerainty over them.

It further stated that in 2006, a study published in the Lancet medical journal revealed that the death toll among Iraqis due to the US-led illegal invasion had reached an estimated 655,000. It has proved beyond any doubt that intelligence dossiers were falsified to provide the US and the UK with a casus belli to invade Iraq. Most of the civilians who perished in the US-UK attacks in Iraq were children. Properties worth billions of US dollars were destroyed and Iraq was plunged into anarchy. The Chilcot report, based on a 2.5 million-word Iraq Inquiry, confirmed that there had been no threat of weapons of mass destruction from Iraq. Former US President George Bush and former British PM Tony Blair should have been prosecuted for war crimes, but they have gone scot free. Worse, the US and the UK are championing human rights and calling for action against those responsible for war crimes!

Referring to India and US relations and highlighting the US hypocrisy, the editorial said that Narendra Modi was denied a visa to visit the US on the basis of laws governing religious freedom when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, where anti-Muslim pogrom happened, on his watch. But the White House chose to roll out the red carpet for him after he was elected Prime Minister because it needed India’s backing for its anti-Chinese campaign.

The editorial emphasized that what’s up Uncle Sam’s sleeve is not difficult to guess and said that the travel ban on Lt. Gen. Silva is another turn of the screw aimed at coercing Sri Lanka into signing the MCC, SOFA and ACSA agreements that are detrimental to its interests.

In conclusion the editorial said that the biggest disservice that can be done to democracy and human rights is to abuse them for political purposes. Punitive action taken against anyone on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations is antithetical to justice and fair play. The self-proclaimed defenders of democracy seem convinced otherwise.

It said that luckily, Sri Lanka has not emulated the US in dealing with more than 12,000 ex-LTTE combatants and the politicians who were openly supportive of Prabhakaran’s terrorist campaign and are now championing democracy.

Meanwhile the Daily Mirror editorial under the title Hypocrisy and the blame game said that on 14 February, the US Secretary of State Pompeo officially announced that the United States had designated Lieutenant General Shavendra Silva, current Commander of the Sri Lanka Army and his immediate family members no entry into the US as it had ‘credible’ evidence of human rights violations in the bloody finale to the civil war.

The editorial said that we do not contest the right of the US to refuse entry to its shores to whomever it is displeased with Pompeo and his impeached boss Trump, are even now involved in driving away civilians from Latin American countries attempting to enter the US. These people are fleeing persecution at the hands of dictatorial regimes backed by the US and asked why this bellicose naming and shaming? 

It said that the Daily Mirror certainly does not subscribe to gross violations of human rights. In fact we have continued to stand up to numerous attempts to curtail this basic right, and numerous members of our staff have paid the ultimate price for standing up for this very right.

We agree human rights violators should be punished for their crimes. Yet we owe it to ourselves, the victims of these dastardly crimes and the world in general that it is the actual perpetrator of the crime who is punished and that public postures are not merely to portray oneself as a human rights defender. 

This editorial also referred to US war crimes related to World War II and said that US atom bombed civilian targets in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was at a time Japan was on the brink of surrender. Official statistics show the bombs immediately devastated their targets. Over the next two to four months, the acute effects of the atomic bombings killed between 90,000 and 146,000 people in Hiroshima and 39,000 and 80,000 people in Nagasaki; roughly half of the deaths in each city occurred on the first day.  

It said that even today, the US refuses to even apologise to the people of Japan for this crime. To rub salt in the wounds, or spit in the face of the Japanese the US continues to maintain its largest military bases in Japan, despite the Japanese people themselves openly protesting against the bases and demanding US withdrawal from the same.

In Afghanistan, the Cost of WarProject estimated that the number who have died through indirect causes related to the war may be as high as 360,000. US military action in Afghanistan continues to date. In Iraq, the Iraq Body Count project documents 183,348 – 205,908 violent civilian deaths through April 2019.

So why in the face of all these mass killings of civilians by the US military itself, is the US imposing sanctions on General Shavendra Silva?  This in the face of the fact that  just last November, the US president pardoned three US military personnel who were convicted of war crimes in Afghanistan by US courts of law. 

Gen. Silva has as yet, not been charged in any court of law, leave alone being convicted in one, despite Pompeo’s pompous claims of ’credible’ evidence. This so-called ‘credible evidence’ is as yet, mere statements issued by Non-Government Organisations. Be that as it may, while condemning human rights violations by who-so-ever commits them, we agree violators need to be tried for their crime. But a man/woman can be punished only after he or she is convicted in a court of law. 

Gen. Shavendra Silva has as yet not been convicted of a crime. If his crime is that he is responsible because of the line of command, surely the then military commander is more responsible than him, or the then Defence Secretary perhaps? Or perhaps is the US smarting from military defeats from Vietnam to Afghanistan, to Iran and Iraq looking for a weak opponent. An opponent divided on the lines of race religion and ethnicity to prove to the world its ‘super power status’. Perhaps it is time our political leaders took a Durtete-like stand and tell the US to take its SOFA, ACSA and MCC baggage and buzz off, the editorial concluded.

The Indian Express Writer P.K.Balachandran (PKB) who writes on Sri Lankan affairs said that the US move of issuing a Travel Ban on Army Commander Gen. Shavendra Silva is seen as arm twisting to get Sri Lanka to sign into the MCC compact and SOFA.  He says that it is an indisputable fact that the United States uses human rights not for humanity’s sake but to further its strategic interests across the world. It’s recognition of human rights violations or its blindness to them is determined by its strategic needs.

For example,  he says to retain India as a strategic partner in its fight against emerging eastern power China, the US is turning a blind eye to Narendra Modi’s oppression of the Kashmiris, the lynching of Muslims and the anti-Muslim citizenship law in India. Modi, who was barred from the US after the Gujarat anti-Muslim carnage in 2002, was white washed after he became India’s Prime Minister and signaled a pro-US tilt. The US ignored the 2002 carnage and lifted the ban on him. That the US is highly biased in its application of human rights principles is evident in the way it tolerates gross violations by the Saudi and Israeli governments.

On Thursday, the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo banned the entry of the Sri Lankan army chief Lt.Gen.Shavendra Silva into the US, for allegedly committing war crimes” when he was one of the frontline commanders of the army in the last phase of the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009.

It is noteworthy that the ban should come eleven years after the war and when there is a government in Colombo which is branded in the West as pro-China”.

Though the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva was seized of the issue of war crimes” in Lanka from 2009, there was no punitive action against Lanka between 2015 and 2019 when there was a pro-West government in Colombo headed by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. In fact, between 20015 and 2019, the annual resolutions of the UNHRC on Lanka became progressively mild.

Balachandran states that the US got the Wickremesinghe regime to seriously consider entering the Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact (MCC) to digitalize land records with the ultimate aim of making private land saleable to foreigners. But this was bitterly opposed by Lankan nationalists. Despite opposition, the Wickremesinghe government got cabinet approval for the MCC. However, it could not implement the decision because it lost the November 2019 Presidential election to the nationalist candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The Gotabaya government put the decision on hold and set up a committee to study the MCC’s compact from the Sri Lankan angle and also its performance in other countries.

PKB poinrs out that the other pact which the US tried to push down Lankan throats was the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and an expanded version of the already existing Access and Cross Services Agreement (ACSA). When the details came out, Sri Lankan nationalists were up and arms. SOFA and the new ACSA severely abridged Sri Lanka’s sovereignty. US troops coming to and operating in the island were to be governed by US and not Sri Lankan laws. The Gotabaya government completely rejected SOFA leaving the US peeved.He says the US State Department then sent Alice Wells to apply pressure on President Gotabaya to accede to the MCC and SOFA in toto, but the Lankan President stuck to his guns.

With the UNHRC to begin its session in late February, the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo thought the moment was opportune to manifestly and tellingly twist Colombo’s arm by announcing the designation of Lt.Gen Shavendra Silva.

PKB claims while the majority Sinhalese are irked by the ban on a war hero” who rid the country of terrorism, the minority Tamils have welcomed it. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) issued a statement recalling that it had, in August 2019 itself, condemned Lt. Gen. Silva’s appointment as Army Commander due to allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and human rights violations against him.

The TNA said that it hopes that the ban will open the eyes of the Lankan Government, which had opposed taking accountability measures even ten years after the war. We consider this as a minor improvement as a result of continuous protests by the war-affected Tamil people,” the TNA said

However, the majority Sinhalese and the government deplored the ban as a violation of Lankan sovereignty and that too on specious grounds. US Ambassador Allaina B. Teplitz was summoned by Foreign Minister Dinesh Gunawardena on Sunday to be told about Lanka’s displeasure.

A press release from the Foreign Ministry said: The Government reiterates that Lt. Gen. Shavendra Silva was appointed as the Commander of the Army by the then Head of State, taking into account his seniority and that there were no substantiated or proven allegations of human rights violations against him. His elevation as the Acting Chief of Defense Staff by the current Head of State President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, was on account of his being the senior most serving military officer.”

While the timing of the imposition of this travel restriction 6 months after Lt. Gen. Silva’s appointment as Army Commander is of concern, it is disappointing that a foreign government should question the prerogative of the democratically elected President to call upon persons with proven expertise to hold key positions on national security related matters.”

The Government of Sri Lanka requests the United States to verify the authenticity of the sources of information and to review its decision,” it added.

The Sunday Times said that it was significant that the ban should come days before the UNHRC was to issue its report on Sri Lanka. The UNHRC report is expected to call for an International Court of Inquiry” to probe alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka.

The US had designated Gen. Silva on the basis of credible information” of his involvement, through command responsibility, in gross violations of human rights, namely extrajudicial killings, by the 58th Division of the Sri Lanka Army during the final phase of Sri Lanka’s Civil War in 2009. Pompeo made the declaration under Section 7031(c) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act.

But the Lankan Foreign Ministry said the charges against Gen.Silva were based not on independently verified information but on unverified” information.

They had been compiled, not on the basis of a filed study by independent observers, but on accounts of refugees and Tamil politicians with a vested interest. While the UN and Western agencies had said that 40,000 to 70,000 had been killed in the last phase of the war, government censuses commissions of inquiry put the death toll at around 8000. The latter estimate is more or less borne out by the fact that out of the population of 300,000 in the war zone, 290,000 had been evacuated and housed in camps on the border of the war zone.

Meanwhile, in the UN Security Council, Lankan Ambassador Kshenuka Senewiratne said that the actions of the Sri Lankan security forces during the conflict were against a group designated as a terrorist organization by many countries (including the US), and even described as ruthless by some. They were not aimed at any community in the country.

She spoke about the modus operandi of suicide attacks adopted by the LTTE, which for the first time in history, deliberately targeted civilians using its human bombs

In an email to the Sunday Times the US embassy in Colombo said the ban on Gen.Silva does not place additional restrictions on security assistance or military engagement in Sri Lanka nor does it represent a shift in policy or desire to limit engagement more broadly with the government and people of Sri Lanka”.

It will not have any impact on military-to-military cooperation such as training and joint operations, economic/technical assistance and trade, the embassy added. But Sri Lankans wonder how cooperation is possible if their army chief was humiliatingly designated?

The designation of the Lankan army chief, who is considered a war hero in the 30 year battle against Tamil terrorism, will gravely damage America’s relations with Sri Lanka, where no political party of the majority Sinhalese community will support a measure which will harm their interests.

Deemed as a hostile act, the designation will nullify any prospect of the US succeeding in getting the Sri Lankan government to sign the MCC SOFA pacts, which the US has been very keen on to get control over Sri Lanka’s land and security.

The designation will be counterproductive also on account of the fact that it will drive Sri Lanka further into the hands of China which is America’s Number One enemy in the Indian and the Pacific Ocean region. And when Sri Lanka veers more towards China, it will be disadvantageous to India also given its deep strategic interest in the island nation.