Keerthi Tennkoon 

The Eastern Province based Muslim identitarian politics, brought to the fore by M. H. M. Ashraff, founder/leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), has entered a new phase with the alliance between the former General Secretary of SLMC, Hasen Ali and Minister and Leader of the All Ceylon Makkal Congress (ACMC) Rishad Bathiudeen.

Currently SLMC is the dominant force in Eastern (Ampara) based Muslim politics along with United People’s Freedom Alliance’s (UPFA) A. L. M. Athaullah. SLMC has hitherto been acknowledged as the undisputed representative of eastern Muslims. However, the current SLMC leader, Rauff Hakeem, hailing from Kandy (Kandiyaan), is rapidly losing support among the Muslims of Ampara (Mattayan).

Athaullah who has considerable power in Akkaraipattu, does not tolerate opposition to his authority and he is attempting to ensure that his son is his successor. He has also joined President Maithripala Sirisena. M. L. A. M. Hizbullah, leader of the Kattankudi Muslims is also supporting the President and President Sirisena has appointed over 10 Muslims organizers to Ampara.

Bathiudeen’s Eastern arrival

However, during the 2015 General Election, Bathiudeen, ‘invaded’ Ampara and his ACMC obtained 33, 000 votes (10%), 18% votes in Kalmunai, 27% from Samanthurai and 10% from Pottuvil. Although they did not obtain a seat in Parliament, ACMC indicated they also have a considerable presence in Ampara. With the alliance with Ali, these numbers are sure to swell.

Bathiudeen became the figurehead of Muslim nationalist/identitarian politics during the 2015 General Election. When he was criticized by Sinhala nationalist/identitarian movement, Bathiudeen used that to increase his appeal among the Muslims. He sure is a great marketer and he is always present whenever there is even a slightest issue between the Sinhala and Muslim communities. Within few years he has become the ‘other’ of the Sinhala nationalist/identitarian movement as well as of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA). As the animosity with the Sinhala and Tamil nationalist/identitarian movements becomes greater, Bathiudeen’s popularity among the Muslims also increases.

Ali on the other hand is perceived as a gentleman politician, in both Colombo and the East. Although he has always entered Parliament through the national list, we all saw his abilities as an organizer during the 2015 Presidential Election.

In August 2015, many expected that the two national lists seats obtained by the SLMC would go to then Chairman of the SLMC, Basheer Segu Dawood and Secretary, Ali. However the SLMC leader appointed M.H.M. Salman and his brother A.R.A. Hafeez (who resigned in 2016 and M.S. Thawfeeq was appointed to the position).

Dawood and Ali, following Udaya Gammanpila, formulated a Pivithuru SLMC. This later morphed into United Peace Alliance. Mansoor A. Cader was appointed General Secretary of Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) in place of Ali. Hakeem promised, before God, that he will remove Salman from the national list slot and give the position to Ali. However since this did not materialize, Ali formed United People’s Alliance (UPA) with Bathiudeen.

Muslim politics in the North

Bathiudeen has managed to assume full control of the Northern Province, using the United National Party (UNP) as his cat’s paw.

It is now obvious that 90% of the candidates contesting for the coming Local Government (LG) elections from the UNP led alliance will be Bathiudeen’s acolytes.

Bathiudeen will now contest the Eastern Province separately and the SLMC has no other option but to join the UNP. Since the UNP does not have strong candidates in the east, the SLMC will have a significant bargaining power. The UNP list for the Northern Province will be created by Bathiudeen and contesting with the UNP is beneficial for him because the UNP can attract some Tamil votes in the North, a feat beyond Bathiudeen.

Plight of Sinhala & Tamil candidates

Bathiudeen will also have a significant say in selecting UNP’s Sinhala and Tamil candidates in the North as well and anyone who wants nominations from the UNP must become a supporter of Bathiudeen. Or they must join the TNA, which is what has already happened in Thunukkai and Manthei. Bathiudeen is also responsible for selecting candidates for the seat for the Sinhalese in Vavuniya and thus the Sinhalese candidates who were to contest from the UNP are now planning to contest independently.

Kalmunai MC is the bastion of Muslim politics and it comprises of Kalmunai Tamil, Kalmunai Muslim, Karativu and Saindamaradu.

As Saindamaradu Pradeshiya Sabha has not been established, Chairman of the Jumma Mosque Y.M. Hanifa is to lead an independent group. Votes in Kalmunai are divided between SLMC, Ali – Bathiudeen alliance, SLFP and SLPP and will become further complicated by the Saindamaradu factor. This will also ensure that the number of votes SLMC gets will go below 50% for the first time.

Ampara has always had powerful Muslim politicians who held positions in the Chandrika – Mahinda administrations and they have artificially created local government bodies in the East. This has lead to anomalies. For example, one can walk from Karativu Divisional Secretariat office to Saindamaradu Divisional Secretariat office. And if a separate local council is established for Saindamaradu, the Tamils who live there will not be represented.There is also an idea that Muslims should only vote for a person named by the mosque in Maliyakkadu, which belongs to Karativu.

Unlike Muslim politics in Colombo and Kandy, Muslim politics in the East is not conscious and candidates who can either spend money or toe the racial line have a clear advantage. This dynamic will reach a new level this time.

The Hasen Ali – Rishad Bathiudeen alliance will clearly change the political dynamic in Ampara. However it is not still clear how it will affect Muslim politics at National level.

The writer is the Executive Director of Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE)

BY MALINDA SENEVIRATNE

‘Democracy!’ was the clarion call of Maithripala Sirisena’s campaign against Mahinda Rajapaksa.  Much was promised.  So far, the only victory in this regard is the 19^th Amendment and even this is but a shadow of what was pledged.  If there is a greater sense of freedom and more reasons to hope that things will get better, such sentiments are offset by clearly evident resistance to such things from the regime itself.

When Mahinda Rajapaksa defeated Sarath Fonseka in 2010, a senior member of the United National Party, responding to claims by a set of feller UNPers that Fonseka was robbed said, ‘It’s ok to claim anything because rhetoric is part and parcel of politics, but there’s something wrong when you start believing your own propaganda!’

This Government is two-faced about a lot of things.  Out with nepotism!” is a slogan that was followed by numerous affirmations and even celebrations of nepotism.  Media Freedom” was promised but there has been direct and subtle subversion.   The echoes of the cry ‘An end to corruption’ had hardly died down when the Central Bank bond issue blew up in the new Government’s face.  ‘No more wastage!’ screamed those who would quickly turn out to be wastrels.  There has been a lot of huffing and puffing over the Right to Information Act, but W. A. Wijewardena, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank who is by no means a ‘Rajapaksa stooge’, has pointed out some embarrassing exclusions which he claims amount to ‘a defeat ofpublic aspirations for transparency in the Central Bank’.  We haven’t noticed even a sigh, leave alone huffing and puffing, over electoral reform.

The Headquarters of Sri Lanka’s Kakistocracy:  Nice from far, but far from nice

And these are (still) the early days.  To be fair, however, most of the criticism of this state of affairs has come from people whose moral right to object is questionable, given culpability in similar acts of omission and commission during the previous regime. The cries of horror and/or the guffaws are not prompted by a desire to drive reform in the promised direction.  Rather, it is to ridicule and undermine.

Perhaps we have a political culture that is at odds with the spirit of democracy, a state of affairs created and nurtured by all, politicians as well as voters.  Not to say of course that democracy is necessarily superior to other forms of governance, considering the hypocrisy it comes coated with in a capitalist system and how it sugarcoats all manner of oppression (which of course are not described as such).

In April 2011, the first time I had an informal conversation with the former President, we spoke about certain pertinent elements of the political culture.  The following is an English translation of that conversation (which was in Sinhala).

‘You said that politics is a marathon and not a 100 meter dash in response to criticism of your son Namal’s ascendancy, but Namal is doing exactly that – a 100 meter dash!’ I said.

‘Well, he has his ways, his speed.  I told him not to get involved in the party’s youth activities, so he started his Nil Balakaaya [The Blue Brigade].  He started Tharunyayata Hetak [A Tomorrow for the Youth] while still at school.  But I’ve told him that he has to respect the party seniors and to address them as sir”,’ that was Mahinda Rajapaksa’s response.

‘Well, he does address the people who surround him as sir” but they treat him as though he is their superior; it’s all very feudal!’

‘You are correct, it IS feudal.  What can we do about it?’ and he laughed the laugh of a politician who had an excellent sense of the realities he finds himself in and of the dimensions or change-potential.

The other day a senior professor in the field of law lamented that people seem to have lost interest in democracy.  What’s probably true is that democracy or rather democratization in the context of the January 8, 2015 political ‘transformation’ was never a serious national need.  What the majority voted for was not democratic change, but the defeat of a particular individual who they believed was no longer suitable to lead the nation.  That’s not a ‘for’ vote but an ‘against vote’.  Not ‘For Maithripala’ but ‘Against Mahinda’; nothing about ‘democracy’ in that overall decision.

Perhaps this explains the manifest sloth on the part of this Government in the matter of democratization.  Deep down they probably know that people really don’t care about such things and don’t see a relationship between democracy and general well-being.  Given the realities of capitalism and the necessity of anomalies for its perpetuation and indeed even the necessity of conflict, all of which override on a day-to-day basis the fairytales of democracy that will not fill stomachs or bank accounts, one cannot blame the people.

So there’s a lot of laughter about the size of the cabinet, the slip-ups of ministers, the non-implementation of pledges and the daily confirmations that things have not changed.  The problem however is not that Sri Lanka is not really a democracy.  What’s problematic is not that we are for all intents and purposes a feudal society, but that what we have is a particularly pernicious form of feudalism.  Sri Lanka is (and has been) a Kakistocracy.

Kakistocracy is a term coined way back in 1829 as a counterpoint to ‘Aristocracy’.

It is drawn from the Greek ‘kakistos’ which means ‘worst’ or ‘evil’, i.e. a superlative of ‘kakos’ (bad).  Indeed, some etymologists hold that it is related to the general word for defecate, ‘caco’ or ‘kako’; a base word for ‘excrement’ in many Indo-European languages (Greek kakke , Latin cacare, Irish caccaim, Serbo-Croatian kakati, Armenian k’akor, and the Old English cac-hus which means ‘latrine’).

So, Kakistocracy would be (if you want to keep things sanitized) ‘government by the worst/evil element of a society’.  ‘Kakocracy’ is a slang version that describes pretty much the same thing and perhaps a more appropriate term in a Sri Lankan context, linguistically speaking.

It stinks, sure.  The question, then, is not only about the form of Government but a system or a social reality that puts kakistos in power.  We can blame politicians or we can blame ourselves.  We can blame an overall education/nurturing system or we can learn to learn something else in some other place in some other way so we are better informed and better able to resist Kakistocracy.  One thing we could avoid, in the interim, is to indulge in and feed the illusion of democracy.  We can begin by naming things correctly.  We can start calling what we have what it is: a Kakistocracy.

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com.  Twitter: malindasene. This article was published in the Daily Mirror on April 9, 2016.

 

By Gomin Dayasri Courtesy The Daily Mirror

Elections can’t be held for another 24 months-till 2020- due to the stupidity evolved by the‘pundits’ on the 19th amendment. Manipulations have placed the UNP in serious trouble. If local Government elections aren’t held in early 2018 – the UNP will lose more votes- for not keeping to the scheduled scorebook. Reasons are too numerous to be indicated in an article of 1000 words at the editor’s request, thankfully ignored permanently by him and me.  

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• Many know a new Government with a new Prime Minister may be in the making
• Too late to wait till 2020 for a comeback
• Mahinda Rajapaksa had a golden opportunity after successfully winning the war
• Blame can be laid on the eerie silence on a matter critical to the Government in power
• The right to criticize judicial error that is internationally observed is no longer deemed sacrosanct
• Judges have a duty to exercise their functions within their jurisdiction

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Too late to wait till 2020 for a comeback…sitting MP’s from the UNP/SLFP/JO/ will lose their seats; that may not endear them to the party leadership of the parties they represent.

UNP digs its grave

End of a coalition:SLFP/ UNP/JO MPs will cross parties to search for a final resting home by not giving a hearing to the selfish pleadings of President Maithripala Sirisena, imploring them to stay with him, goes unheeded. Many know a new Government with a new Prime Minister (PM) may be in the making without holding elections; with a prohibition of 4 and ½ years imposed on holding fresh elections since the last by a Supreme Court at a flawed moment.

With varied elections (1) general (2) presidential (3) provincial and (4) local government lumped within a 24 to 30 months time frame caused by a vague amalgamation of the 13th and 19th amendments by unkempt minds –makes the democratic process imprudent and gives rise to thoughts of jettisoning the two broken legs in our constitution. Serves them right.

Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR) had a golden opportunity after successfully winning the war, to amend 13th to look innocuous by weeding out the poisonous content; instead his subordinates were engaged in unlicensed skullduggery without indulging in proper governance. Puts him out of reckoning: Ranil Wickremesinghe can revive him.Usually vocal Westerners fail to make the needed noise that makes Wickremesinghe look their pet poodle. However no political party will dislodge the Provincial Council system with the JVP acknowledging it, housing its tired politician’s kith and kin to represent the next generation of politics.

Misery is extending beyond our lifetimes
Remember the 19th amendment that was challenged in the case of Dayasri vs AG –with counsel playing the role of the petitioner, addressed the Supreme Court, leaning heavily on the unconstitutionality of taking away the peoples right to vote at General Elections on artificially imposed time frames or the refusal to hold elections for 4 ½ years. Ironically these submissions were re-echoed by several other counsels, but weren’t considered or accepted/rejected by the bench of three judges. All are made helpless today.

As a counsel having won and lost many cases, yet never before or after was the prime submission so readily un-reckoned that seriously affects the people and the country and the democratic process on a major lapse caused by the apex court. Blame can be laid on the eerie silence on a matter critical to the Government in power. Where are the great constitutionalists of the West and the mighty warriors on human rights on this issue? Gone fishing.

Consequences of denying the people the right to exercise the vote at a General Election for a period of 54 months or declining to hold fresh elections, once the Government loses its majority or rules outside the period democracy has mandated or Government gets defeated on a sensitive financial bill such as the Budget to extract money to govern or on a vote of no confidence that defeats a Government in office, leaves the people in a quandary. Enables a crooked Government to make a few cosmetic changes and remain in office with the same crew disarranged.

At least, we now have a Supreme Court to be proud of, where the Chief Justice (whom I criticized previously when he acted meekly and laud him and the rest of the Bench for the service rendered at present) is not afraid to call a spade by its proper name. Why? The right to criticize judicial error that is internationally observed is no longer deemed sacrosanct and has reached our shoreline and has been practiced by bold counsel without cutting the edges of contempt that must be safeguarded to make judges act fearlessly and independently; while gently reminding them none are above the law. The character of Sri Lanka has been enhanced with the ladies and gentlemen that grace and glorify the higher judiciary and the appellate courts having exercised its powers in an upright manner. No more need be asked or expected as we await the decision in one of the most sensitive cases in our lifetime relating to the Bond Commission.

Judges have a duty to exercise their functions within their jurisdiction and can’t exceed the limits to please many and defy the frontiers of jurisdiction. Otherwise it can be challenged in courts successfully with their defense in the hands of the Attorney General.

A moment to savor is when three great judges Wimalaratne, Vythialingam and Colin-Thome fearlessly struck down on grounds of natural justice the findings of the Special Presidential Commission of Inquiry by no lesser men than Sharvananda, Weeraratne and De Alwis holding Sirimavo Bandaranaike guilty of wrongful misconduct; that required then President Jayewardane to restore the status quo by way of a passage via a parliamentary resolution that was sharply criticized by the Federal Party led by Amirthalingam and the CWC of late S Thondaman. Such were times of which much is forgotten.

The story does not end there. J.R Jayewardene voluntarily pardoned ‘Mrs JVP Bandaranaike’, previously denied her the right to contest him in 1982 [substitute was Hector Kobbekaduwa]. UNP’s candidate at the next presidential election was R.Premadasa, not in the good books of JRJ, won the election with help of the JVP’s protest campaign; Premadasa was a better President than the old fox JRJ. He was gunned down by the LTTE.

Bandaranaike died much later after serving another term as PM in extreme age after holding office of PM at the time she was docile. Sri Lankans never grudged it; as she was a leader who loved the country and never betrayed the trust.

By CHRISTOPHER BOOKER  Courtesy Mail on line

Yesterday saw the launch of yet another scare campaign.

As so often before championed by the BBC, it warned us again of the deadly dangers posed by asbestos – this time in Britain’s schools.

In the past 30 years, it was claimed on Radio 4’s Today programme, 178 teachers have died of asbestos-related diseases – and their numbers are rising all the time.

Indeed, according to a new study backed by the teaching unions and cited by the Today programme report, three-quarters of our schools contain asbestos – and almost none of it is being properly ‘managed’ as the law dictates.

It sounds horrific, as though hundreds of thousands of children and their teachers are being daily put at risk by exposure to a substance as deadly as anthrax.

Yet the truth is that this is just the latest in a series of attempts to whip up mass hysteria over the dangers of asbestos in schools, which are, in reality, all but non-existent.

No one would deny that asbestos, which has been used as a heat retardant and binding agent for centuries, can cause serious health problems. The fibres of some types of asbestos have been linked to various forms of cancer. But too often the scare stories are based on fiction, not fact.

A few years ago, for example, much publicity was given to a similar bid to alarm Britain’s parents.

This one centred on a claim by a Michael Lees, whose teacher wife had died of an asbestos-related cancer, mesothelioma.

It claimed that ‘death-trap classrooms’ were ‘riddled with asbestos’ and had claimed the lives of no fewer than 147 teachers between 1991 and 2000.

When Mr Lees’s claim was investigated by the Health and Safety Executive – the Government agency responsible for enforcing asbestos regulation – however, it found his belief that ‘the number of deaths of primary school teachers from mesothelioma was disproportionately high’ was ‘not borne out by the facts’.

The death rate among female teachers, it turned out, was no higher than for the rest of the female working population – and was anyway extremely low.

It is true that most older school buildings contain asbestos products of one kind or another, such as asbestos cement roof slates or ceiling tiles.

But almost all of these products contain relatively harmless white asbestos, encapsulated in cement or other materials, from which it is virtually impossible to extract even a single dangerous fibre.

The dangers from such products are so vanishingly small – as many scientific studies have shown – that, in the cautious words of a report by the HSE itself, they are ‘insignificant’. The risks of their causing lung cancer are ‘arguably zero’.

This is why the HSE correctly advises school authorities to leave asbestos products in place and intact wherever they are serving a useful purpose – such as minimising the risk of fire or providing effective roofing.

So why these repeated attempts to whip up people’s fears over what all the evidence reveals to be a non- existent problem? Part of the problem is that there is money to be made from fuelling asbestos hysteria.

First, licensed asbestos removal contractors can all too often charge exorbitant sums for handling and disposing of this ‘deadly’ material.

Second, a new breed of law firm, which specialises in compensation claims and takes a healthy cut from any successful cases, is keen to tout for custom. They will even pay commissions to trade unions, such as those representing teachers, for any potential ‘clients’ passed on to them.

And both benefit from a general ignorance of what asbestos really is. The word ‘asbestos’ is, in fact, a non-scientific term used to cover two very different substances.

It is now more than 50 years since the iron silicate minerals known as ‘blue’ and ‘brown’ asbestos were discovered to be highly dangerous, killing tens of thousands of people in very unpleasant ways.

Their use amounted to one of the nastier public health disasters of the 20th century and was a terrible tragedy for all those who suffered. On the back of this, compensation claims – particularly in America – amounted to many billions of dollars.

But the devil got into the story when this justified concern was then used, by sleight of hand, to demonise a quite different mineral: ‘white’ asbestos, which is used to make more than 90 per cent of all the asbestos products in the world.

For ‘ white’ asbestos, as even the HSE has acknowledged, is 500 times less dangerous than the ‘blue’ form, because its soft magnesium silicate fibres rapidly dissolve in the human lung.

And when it is encapsulated in cement, as it most often is, it is virtually impossible for those fibres to escape and be breathed into the lungs at all.

Shamefully, however, our gullible lawmakers have allowed themselves to be talked into confusing the genuinely dangerous forms of asbestos with those that pose no risk – simply because they share the same general name. And this has paved the way for these two commercial rackets.

The new army of specialist asbestos removal contractors, the only professionals now allowed to handle asbestos, certainly have a vested interest in exaggerating the dangers of products which are, in effect, harmless. As does the ‘ compensation’ industry, which makes a fortune from claims.

No one could be more deserving of sympathy than the genuine-victims of asbestos-related diseases, the vast majority of whom were dockyard workers, electricians and plumbers, exposed to the dangerous forms of asbestos in the years before those risks were properly recognised.

But this genuine concern has now been used to whip up unjustified alarm over products which are safe, leaving us to face yet another of those damaging and unnecessary ‘scares’ of which our society has seen too many in recent years.

And make no mistake: it is costing us a fortune. Indeed, many people are so confused that they can be fooled into imagining that a harmless asbestos roof might somehow pose a lethal danger – and duped into paying through the nose to have it replaced.

The contractors, lawyers and the BBC might want to scaremonger with this latest attempt to frighten us into imagining our children are dying from exposure to the roof on a school classroom – but it’s time the truth came out.

Or we’re going to unnecessarily scare an awful lot of people and be left picking up a very large bill.

• In a controversial article, The Great Asbestos Hysteria (Mail, 23 February) we said that according to the Health and Safety Executive, the risks from white asbestos products are ‘insignificant’, and ‘arguably zero’ in the case of lung cancer. The HSE assessments related to specific levels of exposure to white asbestos fibres, not white asbestos products, and found a risk from higher levels. The article said that asbestos in UK schools is almost all white. According to the HSE  the more harmful brown asbestos was also frequently used in schools. The writer was in error in saying that the HSE had been forced to withdraw a series of commercials claiming that mesothelioma kills 4,500 a year. In fact, the advertisements were based on an estimate of 4,000 deaths from all asbestos-related disease

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1253022/The-Great-Asbestos-Hysteria-How-man-claims-BBC-profiteering-firms-politicians-grossly-exaggerated-dangers.html#ixzz51piMCU00
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Ministry of Health of New Zealand responses to questions about asbestos in Canterbury.

Background

The workplace health and safety regulator, WorkSafe NZ, has been investigating the testing and management of asbestos during repair work carried out in homes in Canterbury following the earthquakes in 2010 and 2011.

Below are answers to some common questions about potential health risks for homeowners.

Questions and answers

Q1  What is asbestos and what are the different types?

Asbestos is a common term describing a variety of naturally occurring silicate minerals. It was a popular building material up until the 1990s because of its exceptional insulating, fire-resistant and reinforcing properties.

Left undisturbed, asbestos is safe – but if it is exposed or damaged, it can be harmful.

The most commonly mined forms of asbestos are chrysotile (white asbestos), crocidolite (blue asbestos) and amosite (brown asbestos).

Chrysotile asbestos is the type usually present in asbestos-containing materials in New Zealand houses.

Chrysotile fibres tend to break across the fibre, so become shorter and remain thicker than the crocidolite and amosite fibres.

The fibres of health significance are those that can be inhaled. Longer, thinner fibres are a greater risk to health as they are less easily removed by the body’s defences.

Q2  What is the health risk from exposure to asbestos?

Health risks from asbestos depend on a number of factors:

• the amount of asbestos fibres in the air
• how long your exposure lasts
• how often you were exposed
• the size of the asbestos fibres (they must be small enough to be breathed in)
• the amount of time since your first exposure
• the type of asbestos fibre.

People are more likely to experience asbestos-related diseases when they are exposed to higher concentrations of asbestos, are exposed frequently and over long periods of time.

The risk of developing asbestos-related diseases is very low for low-level short-term exposure in the home. This is because the risk of disease is directly related to the amount of asbestos and length of exposure. Short-term low-level exposure in the home is likely to pose negligible risk of disease.

Asbestos-related diseases generally occur in workers who have had heavy exposure over extended periods of time, such as people engaged in the manufacture of asbestos-containing material.

Q3  What happens when I am exposed to asbestos?

The main exposure to asbestos is from breathing in airborne asbestos fibres, some of which may get trapped in your lungs. Most fibres are removed from your lungs by the body’s defences. Levels of fibres in lung tissue build up over time, but some fibres, particularly chrysotile (white asbestos), can be removed with time.

If you swallow asbestos, nearly all of the fibres are excreted in the faeces. There is some evidence that ongoing exposure may increase the risk of gastrointestinal tumours and that short-term high levels of ingestion may lead to precursor lesions of bowel cancer. However these effects may be caused by something other than asbestos.

Asbestos fibres can penetrate into the skin but do not appear to pass through the skin into the blood.

Q4  Are children more susceptible to asbestos than adults?

There is no conclusive evidence that children are at greater risk of developing asbestos-related disease than adults.

Q5 What do I do if I have asbestos in my home?

The risk of developing asbestos-related diseases is extremely low for low-level short-term exposure in the home. This is because the risk of disease is directly related to the amount of asbestos and length of exposure. Short-term low-level exposure in the home is likely to pose negligible risk of disease.

Asbestos poses a risk if it is no longer adequately contained in the material it came in (such as due to damage, being cut or drilled into during building work, home maintenance or wear and tear). For this reason, the Ministry of Health advises homeowners not to undertake home maintenance on materials that may contain asbestos, or dispose of such materials themselves.

If you are worried about asbestos in your home talk to a health protection officer about what to do. You can find one at your local public health unit.

You can arrange to have your house tested for the presence of asbestos fibres. For a list of accredited laboratories, search on the keyword asbestos” on the IANZ website here: http://www.ianz.govt.nz/directory/

For a list of laboratories approved by the New Zealand Demolition and Asbestos Association (NZDAA) go here: http://www.demolition-asbestos.co.nz/wawcs0139831/members.html

Further information is available here: https://www.healthed.govt.nz/resource/removing-asbestos-home

Asbestos-related diseases generally occur in workers who have had heavy exposure over extended periods of time, such as people engaged in the manufacture of asbestos-containing material.

The highest risk of exposure to asbestos in the home is through home renovating, by cutting or drilling through asbestos-cement sheeting or sanding down asbestos-backed linoleum or tiles. Left undisturbed, these materials pose a negligible risk as long as they are in good condition and it is recommended that asbestos-containing material in good condition be left alone.

There is an ongoing, although low, risk of exposure to asbestos fibres in a home where there are damaged or deteriorating asbestos-containing insulation, walls, ceiling or floor tiles. The longer you are exposed to asbestos fibres in the air, and the higher the concentration of the exposure, the greater the risk of developing asbestos-related diseases later on in life.

Q6  How long is it before any health effect from asbestos exposure would occur?

Asbestos-related diseases take many years, usually decades, to develop. Symptoms developing within months of exposure are unlikely to be related to asbestos.

 

Read the Full Report

https://www.health.govt.nz/news-media/news-items/asbestos-advice-householders

සාකච්ඡා කළේ- චමින්ද මුණසිංහ උපුටාගැණීම ලංකාදීප

ඒකාබද්ධයේ නාගැනීම, නාම යෝජනාවක්වත් හරියට හදාගන්න බැරිද, ආණ්ඩුව කළ ඇඟට දැනෙන සංවර්ධනය, හම්බන්තොට වරාය,  සාමකතා බිඳවැටීම, ඒකාබද්ධයේ පතුරු ගැලවීම යනාදී කරුණු සම්බන්ධයෙන් මෙවර සඳුදා හමුවෙන් අදහස් දක්වන්නේ පිවිතුරු හෙළ උරුමයේ නායක සහ එ.ජ.නි.ස. පාර්ලිමේන්තු මන්ත්‍රී උදය ප්‍රභාත් ගම්මන්පිල මහතායි.

ප්‍රශ්නය:- මැතිවරණය ඉල්ලා කෑ ගැසූ ඒකාබද්ධයට මැතිවරණය දුන්න ගමන්ම නා ගත්තා නේද?
පිළිතුර:- පසුගිය පළාත් පාලන මැතිවරණ දෙකේදීම එජාපයේ හදවත වන කොළඹ මහ නගර සභාවෙත් නාමයෝජනා ප්‍රතික්‍ෂේප වුණා. ඒ නිසා පළාත් පාලන මැතිවරණයකදී නාමයෝජනා ප්‍රතික්‍ෂේප වීම අලුත් ප්‍රවෘත්තියක් නෙමෙයි. මෙතනදි අපි අර්බුදයකට මුහුණ දී සිටියා. මේ මැතිවරණයට මුහුණ දෙන දැවැන්තම සන්ධානය අපි. පක්‍ෂ විස්සක් අපෙන් නාම යෝජනා ඉල්ලනවා. ඒ වගේම  ආණ්ඩුවේ පිරිහීම හමුවේ ජයග්‍රහණය පිළිබඳ විශ්වාසය නිසා අපෙන් අපේක්‍ෂකත්වය බලාපොරොත්තු වන පිරිස අතිමහත් ගණනක් වුණා. මේ දැවැන්ත ඉල්ලුම නිසාම සීමිත කොට්ඨාස අසීමිත අපේක්‍ෂකයන් අතර බෙදාගැනීමේ අර්බුදයට අපි මුහුණ දුන්නා.

අන්තිම මොහොත දක්වාම අපේක්‍ෂකත්වය පිළිබඳ ගැටලු නිරාකරණය කරන්න වීම නිසා නිසියාකාරව සියල්ල සිදුවී ඇත්දැයි පරීක්‍ෂා කිරීමට අවස්ථාවක් නැතිවුණා. මහරගම, අගල්ලවත්ත නාමයෝජනා ප්‍රතික්ෂේප කිරීමට නීතිමය පදනමක් නෑ. එනිසා අධිකරණයේ සහනය අපට ලැබෙනවා. අනෙක් ඒවාටත් නීතිමය තර්ක ගොඩනැගීමේ හැකියාව තිබෙනවා. ඒ අනුව මේ ප්‍රශ්නය අධිකරණයෙන් විසඳගන්න බලාපොරොත්තු වෙනවා.

ප්‍රශ්නය:- නාමයෝජනාවක්වත් හරියට හදාගන්න බැරි පක්‍ෂයක් පළාත් පාලන ආයතන කරන්නේ කොහාමද?
පිළිතුර:- ඒ තර්කය  මොකක්ද? නාමයෝජනා හරියට හදාගත්ත එ.ජා.පයට රට කරන්න පුළුවන්ද? නාම යෝජනා හරියට හදාගන්න බැරි අය රට කරන්නේ කොහොමද කියලා අහනව නම් නාමයෝජනා හරියට හදාගත්ත අයට රට කරන්න පුළුවන් වෙන්න එපැයි. තමන් වැඩ බැරි පිරිසක් බව වසර තුනක් තිස්සේ එ.ජා.පය රටට ප්‍රදර්ශනය කළා. නාමයෝජනා කියන්නේ පහේ ශිෂ්‍යත්වය වගේ බහුවර්ණ ප්‍රශ්න පත්‍රයක් නෙමෙයි. එතන සිදුවන්නේ අත්වැරැදීම්. මේක දැනුම පිළිබඳ ප්‍රශ්නයක් නෙමෙයි. දිනය, මුද්‍රාව, තැනක දෙතැනක අත්සන මඟ හැරෙන්න පුළුවන්. කිසිම ඡන්දයක් දිනන්න බැරි ස්වාධීන කණ්ඩායම් පවා නාම යෝජනා පත්‍ර හරියට සකස් කරනවා. නාම යෝජනා පත්‍රයක් පිරවීම දෙකේ පංතියේ ළමයකුට වුවත් කළ හැකි දෙයක්. මෙතන වුණේ අපට ඇති දැවැන්ත ඉල්ලුම නිසා අවසාන මොහොත දක්වා මේවා පරීක්‍ෂා කරන්න බැරිවීමයි. හැබැයි ඒ අඩුපාඩුව අනිවාර්යෙන්ම සකසා ගත යුතුයි. ගිය වතාවේ එ.ජා.පයේ නාමයෝජනා 26ක් ප්‍රතික්ෂේප වුණා.

ප්‍රශ්නය:- පොහොට්ටුවෙන් ඡන්දය ඉල්ලා ජයගැනීම හීනයක් පමණයි කියා කියනවා නේද?
පිළිතුර:- පොහොට්ටුව දිනන්න බෑ දිනන්න බෑ කියා කියන විට මතක් වෙන්නේ කනත්ත ළඟින් යනවිට මම බය නෑ… මම බය නෑ… කියා මතුරන බයගුල්ලන්. පොහොට්ටුවට දිනන්න බෑ කියන මන්තරය ආණ්ඩුවේ අය මතුරන්නේ පොහොට්ටුව දිනන බව හරියටම දන්න නිසයි. ජනතාව වසර තුනක් පුරාවට දුක්වින්දා. වසර තුනක් පුරාවට හදේ එකතු වූ දුක, කේන්තිය,  කලකිරීම පිටකරන්න ලැබෙන පළමු අවස්ථාව මේකයි. ඒ නිසා අනිවාර්යයෙන්ම මේ ඡන්දයෙන් දිනන්න ආණ්ඩුවට ඉඩක් නෑ.

මොනව කළා කියලා ආණ්ඩුව ඡන්දය ඉල්ලන්නද? සාමකාමිව තිබූ රටේ උතුර – දකුණ ගිනි තිබ්බා කියලා ඡන්ද ඉල්ලන්නද? ෆෙඩරල් ව්‍යවස්ථාවක් ගෙනැවිත් රට කෑලි නවයට කැඩුවා කියලා ඡන්දය ඉල්ලන්නද? හම්බන්තොට වරාය විකුණුවා, මත්තලයි, ත්‍රිකුණාමලයයි විකුණාගන්න ඡන්දය දෙන්න කියන්නද? මේ අය බදු බර, බඩු මිල වැඩි කළා මිස ජනතාවට දුන්න දෙයක් නෑ. ඒ නිසා මේ අය දිනන්න පුළුවන් කියනවා නම් එය වසරේ හොඳම විහිළුව වෙනවා.

ප්‍රශ්නය:- ඇහැට පේන සංවර්ධනයකට වඩා ඇඟට දැනෙන සංවර්ධනයක් කළ බව ආණ්ඩුව කියනවා නේද?
පිළිතුර:- මේ රටේ පසුගිය කාලයේ කළ එක දෙයක් කියන්න, ආණ්ඩුව සංවර්ධයක් නොකළාම නෙමෙයි. දූෂිත රාජ්‍ය අතර 56 වැනි තැන තිබූ ලංකාව 2015 වන විට 48වැනි ස්ථානයටත් මේ වසර අගවන විට 4වැනි ස්ථානයටත් ඔසවා තබා තිබෙනවා. මේ අය දූෂණය, සංවර්ධනය කර තිබෙනවා. මහ බැංකු බැඳුම්කර වංචාව හරහා ගජමිතුරු කැල සංවර්ධනය කර තිබෙනවා. රාජ්‍ය සම්පත් විදේශිකයන්ට විකිණීම හරහා විදේශ ආයෝජකයන් සංවර්ධනය කර තිබෙනවා. ආණ්ඩුවේ නායකයන්ගේ රට සවාරි හා සුපිරි ජීවිත වෙනුවෙන් ණය ගැනීමේ රටේ ණය බර සංවර්ධනය කර තිබෙනවා. මේ ආණ්ඩුව කියනවා ඇත්තේ. ඕවා වෙන්න ඇති.

ප්‍රශ්නය:- හම්බන්තොට වරාය විකුණුවා නෙමෙයි රටේ ණය බර නිදහස් කරගන්න වසර 40කට පසු ගෙනා මහා ආයෝජනයක් නොවේද? ඒවා පිළිගන්න අකමැතිද?
පිළිතුර:- විකිණීමක් කොහොමද ආයෝජනයක් වෙන්නේ. මේ රටේ ජනතාව නූගතුන් නම් ඔය කතා විශ්වාස කරාවි. ආයෝජනයක් ගෙනාව නම් රටේ අලුත් දෙයක් නිර්මාණය වෙන්න ඕන. මෙතනදි වුණේ අපි නිර්මාණය කළ හම්බන්තොට වරායේ අයිතිය අපට අහිමිවීම පමණයි. ඩොලර් බිලියන 101කට මෙය මිලදී ගැනීමෙන් එහි මහා වටිනාකමක් ඇති බවත් ආණ්ඩුව එදා කිව්වේ බොරු බවත් ඔප්පු වී අවසන්. මේ මුදල්වලින් එක ශතයක් ණය ගෙව්වේ නෑ. ණය බර නිසා වරාය වික්කා නම් ලැබෙන මුදල ණයට හිලව් වෙන්න ඕන. අපට ශතයක්වත් ලැබෙන්න ඕන නෑ. ඒ මුදල කෙළින්ම ණය කපා ගැනීමක් හැටියට සටහන් වෙන්න ඕන. ඩොලර් මිලියන 292ක චෙක්පතක් අගමැතිතුමා බාර ගන්නවා අපි දැක්කා. එහෙනම් මේ ණයට හිලව් වීමක් නෙමෙයි. විකුණා මුදල් ලබාගැනීමක්. ණයට හිලව්වීමට වරාය විකුණුවා කියන කතාව එදා ප්‍රදර්ශනය කළ චෙක්පතින්ම බිඳ වැටෙනවා.
වරාය විකිණීමට එරෙහි වූ එ.ජා.ප. ඇමැති ඉවත්කර ඒ වගකීම ශ්‍රී.ල.නි.ප. ඇමැතිවරයකුට දුන්නා. රට විකිණීමේ එ.ජා.ප. වැඩපිළිවෙළ ඇමැති මණ්ඩලයෙදිත් පාර්ලිමේන්තුවේදිත් ශ්‍රී.ල.නි.පය අත් ඔසවා අනුමත කරනවා. එ.ජා.ප.යේ තරමටම ශ්‍රී.ල.නි.පයෙත් මේ මඩ ගෑවිලයි තිබෙන්නේ. ඔවුන්ට මේ පාපකර්මයෙන් ගැලෙවන්න බෑ. ආණ්ඩුව තුනට කැඩී මේ ඡන්දයට ඇවිත් තිබෙනවා. ජ.වි.පෙත් ආණ්ඩුවේ පාර්ශවකරුවෙක්. ආණ්ඩුව පාර්ලිමේන්තුවේ අර්බුදයට ලක්වන විට ඡන්ද සම්පාදනය කරන්නේ ජ.වි.පෙයි හවුලේ ආණ්ඩු කරන නිල්, රතු, කොළ පක්‍ෂ තුන අද තුනට කැඩිලා මැතිවරණයට එනවා. මේ තුනම ප්‍රතික්ෂේප කරන ආණ්ඩුවේ වැඩපිළිවෙල  වැරැදියි කියා විශ්වාස කරන ජනතාවට ඇති එකම විකල්පය පොහොට්ටුව පමණයි.

ප්‍රශ්නය:- මේ ඡන්දය ආණ්ඩුව පෙරළන ජනමත විචාරණයක් බව ඔබලා කියන්නේ මොන පදනමෙන්ද?
පිළිතුර:- එතන පදනම් තුනක් තිබෙනවා. මේ ආණ්ඩුවේ වසර තුනකින් පසුව පවත්වන පළමු මැතිවරණය වීම එකක්. මේ අයගේ තෙවසරක ගමන ජනතාව අනුමත කරනවද, නැද්ද කියන එක ගැන ජනමත විමසුමක් බවට මෙය පත්ව තිබෙනවා. පාරම්පරික එ.ජා.ප. පාක්‍ෂිකයා පවා අද කලකිරිලා. ඔවුන්ට පාරේ බැහැල යන්න බෑ. වෙනස සැපද” කියා අහනවා. වසර විස්සක් මේ අය දුක්වින්දේ මෙහෙම පිරිහෙන ආණ්ඩුවක් හදාගන්න නෙවෙයි. ආණ්ඩුවේ ගමන වැරැදියි කියන පණිවිඩය දෙන්න එ.ජා.ප. පාක්‍ෂිකයන්වටත් ඕන වී තිබෙනවා. ඒ සඳහා එ.ජා.ප. පාක්‍ෂිකයොත් මෙවර පොහොට්ටුවට ඡන්දය දෙනවා.
මේ මැතිවරණයෙන් පොහොට්ටුව විශිෂ්ට ජයක් ලැබුවොත් එ.ජා.පයේ ශ්‍රී.ල.නි.පයේ සිටියට දේශපාලන අනාගතයක් නැති බව ඒවායේ සිටින මැති ඇමැතිවරු තේරුම් ගන්නවා. එනිසා මේ අය පොහොට්ටුව වටා එක්රොක් වීමෙන් පාර්ලිමේන්තුවේ සාමාන්‍ය බහුතරය මහින්ද රාජපක්‍ෂ මහත්තයට ලබාගැනීමට හැකිවෙනවා. එවිට අපට මෙරට ඉතිහාසයේ ස්වර්ණමය යුගය වන මහින්ද යුගය යළි උදාකළ හැකිවෙනවා.
 මේ මැතිවරණය දිගු මැතිවරණ ක්‍රියාවලියක ආරම්භයයි. පළාත් සභා මැතිවරණ ඊළඟට එනවා. තව මාස 20කින් ජනාධිපතිවරණය ප්‍රකාශයට පත්කළ යුතුයි. ඒක තීරණාත්මකයි. පුංචි ඡන්දයෙන් හොඳ ජයක් ලැබුවොත් ජනාධිපතිවරණය ජයග්‍රහණයෙන් කෙළවර කරන්න අපට පුළුවන්. මේ කාරණා තුන නිසා ආණ්ඩුව පෙරළන මැතිවරණයක් බවට මේ පුංචි ඡන්දය පත්වී තිබෙනවා.

ප්‍රශ්නය:- ජයග්‍රහණයක් ලබාගත්තොත් කියා අනියමාර්ථයෙන් කතා කරන්නේ ජය පිළිබඳ බියක්, සැකයක් තිබෙන නිසාද?
පිළිතුර:- මම සිංහල භාෂාව විශිෂ්ට ලෙස සමත් වූ කෙනෙක්. ඒ නිසා මම ව්‍යාකරණ නිවැරැදිවයි භාවිතා කරන්නේ. අනාගතය ගැන කතා කරන විට අපි කතා කරන්න ඕන ඒ අනියමාර්ථයෙන් තමයි.

ප්‍රශ්නය:- එ.ජා.පයට එරෙහිව සටන් කරන ඔබලා ශ්‍රී.ල.නි.ප. සමග එකතු නොවුණේ ඇයි?
පිළිතුර:- අපේ සටන ශ්‍රී.ල.නි.පයටවත්  එ.ජා.පයටවත් ජ.වි.පෙටවත් එරෙහිව නෙවෙයි. මේ ආණ්ඩුවට එරෙහිවයි. රටකන, වැඩ බැරි ආණ්ඩුව පරාජය කිරීම අපේ අරමුණයි. මේ පක්‍ෂ තුන වෙන්කර ආණ්ඩුවක් ගැන කතා කරන්න බැහැ. අද තිබෙන විනාශයට මේ කොටස් තුනම සමානව දායක වී සිටිනවා. ඒ නිසා එක් අයෙක් පරාජය කර තවත් අයෙක් බේරා ගැනීමේ කිසිදු වුවමනාවක් අපට නැහැ. අපට වුවමනා මේ රට විනාශ කරමින් පවතින ආණ්ඩුවේ ප්‍රතිපත්ති සමුදාය ජනතාව ලවා පරාජය කරවීමයි.  

ප්‍රශ්නය:- සාම කතා බිඳ වැටුණේ ඇයි?
පිළිතුර:- ඒකට හේතු ගණනාවක් තිබෙනවා. ශ්‍රී.ල.නි.පය, එ.ජා.ප.ය සමග දීගයක් කන ගමන් මට ගෙදර ගෑණි පේන්න බෑ, කැමැත්තෙන් නෙමෙයි මේ කසාදෙ ඉන්නෙ, අපේ පොදු හතුරා ගෙදර ඉන්න ගෑනි වැඩියෙන් ආදරේ ඔයාටයි කියමින් ඒකාබද්ධයට ආල හැඟුම් පාන්න ගත්තා. අපේ මන්ත්‍රීවරු තෙවැනි සිල්පදය සිහිපත් කර ඔයාට මාත් එක්ක දීග කන්න ඕන නම් ඔය කසාදෙන් අයින් වෙන්න අනියම් ප්‍රේමයකට ගොස් කාමයේ වරදවා හැසිරෙන්න කැමැති නෑ කියන පණිවිඩය දුන්නා. ඒක කිව්වාම කසාදෙ කඩාකප්පල් කළා කියා චෝදනා නගනවා.

ප්‍රශ්නය:- කසාදය නොකෙරුණේ දෙතුන් දෙනකුගේ අකමැත්ත නිසාද?
පිළිතුර:- අපේ ප්‍රශ්නය තිබෙන්නේ වත්මන් ආණ්ඩුවේ ප්‍රතිපත්ති සමගයි. එම ප්‍රතිපත්ති අනුමත කරමින් ඉන්න පිරිසක් සමග එකට වැඩ කිරීමේ හැකියාවක් අපට නෑ.

ප්‍රශ්නය:- පොහොට්ටුවෙත් පතුරු ගැලවෙන්න පටන් අරන් නේද?
පිළිතුර:- මැතිවරණ  කියන්නේ කුණාටුවක්. විදේශ බලවේගවලින් යැපෙන පිරිස් මැතිවරණවලදී ලෝබ නැතිව සල්ලි විසිකරනවා. එවිට දුර්වලයන් එක්කෙනෙක් දෙන්නෙක් ඒවාට හසුවෙන්න පුළුවන්. ආණ්ඩුවට සල්ලි තිබෙන බව ඇත්ත. ඒත් අපට ජනතාව ඉන්නවා. ආණ්ඩුවට ධන බලය, මැර බලය, නිල බලය, විදෙස් බලය ඇති. ඔය සියල්ල ජන බලයට යටයි. සල්ලිවලට මන්ත්‍රීවරු මාරුවුණාට ජනතාව මාරුවෙන්නේ නැහැ. මන්ත්‍රීවරු ඒ පැත්තට යනවිට ජනතාව මේ පැත්තට එනවා.

ප්‍රශ්නය:- මුදල් බලය නෙමෙයි නාමයෝජනා සහ සාකච්ඡාවක් නොදීම නිසා නේද මේ අවුල?
පිළිතුර:- ශිරානි මන්ත්‍රීතුමියට කලකිරෙන්න හේතුවක් තිබුණා. එහෙම හේතු  තිබුණත් අපේක්‍ෂකත්වයට වඩා මවුබිම ඉදිරියෙන් තැබිය යුතු බවයි මම එදා කිව්වේ. නුගේගොඩදී මහින්ද සුළඟ ආරම්භ කළේ රට බේරාගන්න මිස අපේ ගෝලබාලයන් ප්‍රාදේශීය සභාවලට යවන්න නෙමෙයි. මවුබිමේ සතුරන් ලෙස තෙවසරක් මතුරපු අයගේ තුරුලට අපේක්‍ෂකත්වය නොලැබීම නිසා යන්න පුළුවන් නම් අපේ දේශප්‍රේමිත්වය ප්‍රශ්න කරන්න අපටම සිදුවෙනවා. දේශප්‍රේමී පරීක්‍ෂාවේදී ශ්‍රියානි මැතිනිය අසමත් වී තිබෙනවා.

ප්‍රශ්නය:- පොහොට්ටුවේ පක්‍ෂත් කැඩෙනවා. ඡන්දයට මුහුණ දෙන්නේ කොහොමද?
පිළිතුර:- ඇයි අපේ මන්ත්‍රීවරු බිලීබාන්නේ, අපි ශක්තිමත් නිසයි. ඔවුන්ට ජනතාව නැති නිසා. මන්ත්‍රීවරු බිලිබාගැනීමෙන් යම් පිරිසක් එකතු කර ගන්න උත්සාහ කරනවා. මන්ත්‍රීවරු බිලිබා ගැනීමෙන්ම පෙන්නුම් කරන්නේ ඔවුන් ඒකාබද්ධ විපක්‍ෂයට පොදුජන පෙරමුණට බියවී සිටින බවයි. අපි දුර්වල කරන්න උත්සාහ කරන්නේ අපි ශක්තිමත් නිසයි.

ප්‍රශ්නය:- ඒ නිසාද නැති නම් ඇතුළේ අර්බුද නිසාද?
පිළිතුර:- පොදුජන පෙරමුණ වටා දේශපාලන පක්‍ෂ 20ක් ගොනු වී තිබෙනවා. ලෝකයේ තිබෙන පුංචිම සංවිධානය තමයි පවුල. මෙහි සිටින සාමාජිකයන් දෙදෙනා අතරත් මතභේද ගැටුම් ඇතිවෙනවා. එවැනි කුඩා සංවිධානයකත් ගැටුම් ඇතිවෙනවා නම් දැවැන්ත සංවිධානයක ගැටුම් ඇතිවීම පුදුමයට කාරණයක් නෙමෙයි. හැබැයි දේශප්‍රේමිත්වය කියන නූලෙන් අපි ඔක්කොම එකට ගැට ගැසිලයි ඉන්නේ. ඒනිසා කොතරම් සිත්වේදනා ඇතිවුවත් එය මේ සන්ධානය බිඳී ගැලවී යාමට හේතුවක් නෙමෙයි. මේ දේශද්‍රෝහී නිල්, කොළ, රතු හවුල එකට තබා පරාජය කිරීම අද ජාතික අවශ්‍යතාව වී තිබෙනවා.

ප්‍රශ්නය:- අවසානයට ගම්මන්පිලත් ජනාධිපති ළඟ සිටීවිද?
පිළිතුර:- පසුගිය වසර තුනටම ජනාධිපතිවරයා මට හමුවුණේ එකම අවස්ථාවක. ඒ මාගේ පාසලේ උත්සවයකට ප්‍රධාන අමුත්තා ලෙස ඔහු පැමිණි නිසයි. ඒනිසා මම ජනාධිපති ළඟට යාවි කියා කිසිම කෙනෙක් කිසිම දවසක සැකකර නෑ. රටේ ප්‍රශ්නයක් කතා කරන්නවත් මම එතුමාගෙන් සාකච්ඡාවක් ඉල්ලා නෑ.

උපුටාගැණීම  මව්බිම

හිටපු ජනාධිපති මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ මහතාට යළි ජනාධිපතිවරණයට තරග කිරීමට නොහැකි බව ප්‍රකාශ කළද 2020 වසරේදී මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ මැතිතුමාගේ නායකත්වයෙන් යුත් ආණ්ඩුවක් අනිවාර්යයෙන්ම පිහිටුවන බව හිටපු ආර්ථික සංවර්ධන අමාත්‍ය බැසිල් රාජපක්ෂ මහතා ‘මව්බිම’ට ප්‍රකාශ කළේය.
එදා රුසියාවේ ජනාධිපති පුටින් මහතාට තරග කිරීමට නොහැකි බව ප්‍රකාශ වුවද, එදා රුසියාවේ ජනතාවට පුටින් මහතාගේ නායකත්වය අවශ්‍ය වූ නිසා නිසි ක්‍රමවේදයක් සකසා එරට ජනතාව විසින් බලය ලබාදුන් බව සිහිපත් කිරීමට කැමැති බවද බැසිල් රාජපක්ෂ මහතා පෙන්වා දුන්නේය.

ඒ ආකාරයෙන් මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ මැතිතුමාට මේ රටේ යළි නායකත්වය ලබාදීමට මේ රටේ ජනතාව නොඉවසිලිමත්ව සිටින බවද බැසිල් රාජපක්ෂ මහතා ප්‍රකාශ කළේය.
ලෝකයේ දරුණුම ත්‍රස්තවාදයෙන් මේ රට බේරාගෙන විශාල සංවර්ධනයකට ගෙන ගියේ හිටපු ජනාධිපති මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ මහතාගේ නායකත්වය යටතේ බවත් පසුගිය වසර 3 තුළදී හැම පැත්තකින්ම පහතට වැටී තිබෙන රට යළි ගොඩනැංවීම සඳහා මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ මහතාගේ නායකත්වය මේ රටට අත්‍යවශ්‍ය වී තිබෙන බවත් බැසිල් රාජපක්ෂ මහතා පෙන්වා දෙයි.

Courtesy newsin.asia

Colombo, November 18 (newsin.asia): The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the United Nations (UN) are going their separate ways on the Rohingya issue. While ASEAN is ignoring it for the sake of economic cooperation and internal consensus, the UN is taking it up seriously counting it as one of the greatest human tragedies of recent times.

Leaders of ASEAN and members of the UN’s General Assembly Third Committee  (on Human Rights) met at about the same time earlier this week, ASEAN in Manila and the UN in New York. But while the UN committee came out with a strong statement condemning the persecution of the minority Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar (despite opposition from China and abstention by India), ASEAN ignored the issue even though it is association of liberal states and Myanmar is a member on which it could have prevailed.

On Thursday, the UN committee called upon Myanmar to end military operations that had led to the systematic violation and abuse of human rights” of Rohingya Muslims in the country’s Rakhine state. The committee’s draft resolution, which  will be taken up by the General Assembly in December, urged Myanmar to grant access to UN fact finding teams and  called for full and unhindered humanitarian aid access to Rakhine State.

It asked Myanmar to grant full citizenship rights to the Rohingyas and urged U.N. Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, to appoint a Special Envoy to negotiate with  Myanmar.

The move revived a U.N. resolution that was dropped last year due to the country’s progress on human rights.

The General Assembly’s Third Committee, which focuses on human rights, voted 135 in favor, 10 against with 26 abstentions.

China and the Russian Federation, which argue against international intervention in the internal affairs of Myanmar and other countries, and want Myanmar and Bangladesh to settle the refugee issue bilaterally, were among the 10 countries which voted against the resolution.

Among the 26 which abstained, were India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Japan and Thailand.

Being a victim of the displacement of the Rohingyas, and having to put up with 600,000 refugees now in addition to 400,000 already in the country on account of previous episodes of ethnic violence, Bangladesh voted for the resolution. Among others which voted for are Muslim countries, Maldives and Pakistan.

For the past 15 years, the UN Third Committee has been annually adopting a resolution condemning Myanmar’s human rights record. But last year, the European Union did not put forward a draft text citing progress under the leadership of the democratically elected Myanmar State Counselor, Aung San Suu Kyi.

However, in the past three months more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims had fled to Bangladesh after the Myanmar military began operations against Rohingya militants, who attacked 30 police posts and an army base in Rakhine state on August 25.

This prompted the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to put forward a new draft U.N. resolution, which will now be formally adopted by the 193-member General Assembly in December. The UNGA’s resolution will deepen international pressure, but will not be legally binding.

Rampant Rape  

On Monday, Myanmar’s army released a report denying all allegations of rape and killing by the security forces, days after replacing the army General in charge of the military operation in Rakhine state.

Myanmar has been refusing entry to a U.N. panel that was tasked with investigating allegations of abuses after a smaller military counteroffensive launched in October 2016. The  Fact-finding Mission on Myanmar has Marzuki Darusman (Indonesia) as Chairman, and Radhika Coomaraswamy (Sri Lanka) and  Christopher Dominic Sidoti (Australia) as members. It visited refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar in  Bangladesh and came out with stinging observations about rape and murder committed by the Myanmar forces.

Meanwhile, Angelina Jolie, Hollywood actress and Special Envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and Co-Founder of Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative”, strongly criticized sexual violence against Rohingya women and children. Speaking at a UN conclave in Vancouver she said that rape has a deeper impact on women than bullets.

Lt Gen Mahfuzur Rahman , Principal Staff Officer , Armed Forces Division  of Bangladesh, in a  closed meeting on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse sought Angelina Jolie’s support to expose the sexual exploitation of Rohingya women and children  in Myanmar. Responding to this, Jolie said she is planning to see the Rohingya victims of sexual violence. She applauded Bangladesh’s generous humanitarian approach towards the refugees.

Earlier in the week, Pramila Patten, the U.N. Special Envoy on Sexual Violence in  Conflict, said in Dhaka that sexual violence against the Rohingyas was commanded, orchestrated and perpetrated by the Armed Forces of Myanmar.”

ASEAN’fs Indifference

This year’s ASEAN Summit ended on November 15 with the commitment to forge cooperation for peace, security and development. ASEAN and other world leaders attending the Summit also pledged to boost business, investment and trade.

However, the meeting avoided passing a resolution that would call upon Aung San Suu Kyi and her government to in resolving the Rohingya crisis. Few countries spoke about the issue. The only exceptions were Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. They cautioned ASEAN members of the consequences of bypassing the Rohingya issue and reiterated that the humanitarian crisis involving the Rohingyas might cause regional instability and radicalization”.

Most member countries did not exert adequate pressure on the Myanmar leader to take back the Rohingyas. They did not come up with any specific proposal for stopping the genocide being committed by the Myanmar military.

Even a Code of Conduct similar to that undertaken for the South China Sea could have been visible evidence of ASEAN’s responsiveness in mitigating the severity of the Rohingya crisis,” writes Dr Mohammed Parvez Imdad,  Visiting Professor and Lead Economist based in Manila, Philippines, in an article in The Daily Star.

Human Rights Ignored

Deviating from past practice, Summit totally ignored issues of human rights and civil liberties, Imdad observes.

ASEAN should have noted that Myanmar is sowing the seeds of discord and destabilization, the costs of which would be too much for the region to bear. Additionally, Myanmar’s actions will adversely impact regional cooperation frameworks and potentials, both in Southeast Asia and South Asia,” Imdad adds.

Leaders of ASEAN would have done justice to their own agendas for peace and security had the Summit Declaration reflected how Bangladesh has responded to the Rohingya crisis. Bangladesh’s response and handling of the crisis is an exemplary gesture of support to distressed individuals and extraordinary diligence in ensuring peace and stability in the region,” Imdad points out.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, told reporters in Beijing that Foreign Minister Wang Yi would go to Bangladesh and Myanmar this weekend to meet his counterparts and exchange views on bilateral ties and issues of mutual regional concern.”

But Geng did not say whether Wang would discuss the Rohingya issue. However, China has been trying to get Myanmar and Bangladesh to sit together and thrash out the Rohingya issue bilaterally.

As a result of the efforts of a Chinese Special Envoy, the Interior Ministers of Myanmar and Bangladesh had met once and agreed on a 10-point program including the repatriation of refugees from Bangladesh to Myanmar. But Bangladesh reneged on the agreement even though it maintained that the bilateral engagement would continue.

On Monday and Tuesday, the Chinese Foreign Minister would attend a meeting of Asian and European foreign ministers in the Myanmar capital of Naypyitaw. The Rohingya issue would come up there thanks to Western leaders.

 

Courtesy NewsIn.Asia

New York, December 20 (Reuter): Yanghee Lee, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, has been denied permission to visit Myanmar. had been due to visit in January to assess human rights across Myanmar, including abuses against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State.

But Myanmar had told her she was no longer welcome, she said, adding in a statement that this suggested something terribly awful” was happening in the country.

From what I see right now I’m not sure if they are feeling pressured. I’m not sure if there is the right kind of pressure placed on the military commanders and the generals,” she later told Reuters by phone from Seoul.

She said it was alarming that Myanmar was strongly supported by China, which has a veto at the UN’s top table in New York. Other countries including the United States and human groups were advocating targeted sanctions on the military, she said.

It has to work. And I’m sure the world has to find a way to make it work. And I think the United Nations and its member states should really try to persuade China to really act towards the protection of human rights,” she said.

More than 650,000 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh since Aug 25, when attacks by Muslim insurgents on the Myanmar security forces triggered a response by the army and Buddhist vigilantes.

Surveys of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh by aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres have shown at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in Rakhine state in the month after violence flared up on Aug 25, MSF said last week.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein has called the violence a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and said he would not be surprised if a court eventually ruled that genocide had taken place.

Lee had planned to use her visit to find out procedures for the return of Rohingya refugees, and to investigate increased fighting in the Kachin and northern Shan areas of Myanmar.

Lee, in an earlier statement, said Myanmar’s refusal to cooperate with her was a strong indication that there must be something terribly awful happening” throughout the country, although the government had repeatedly denied any violations of human rights.

They have said that they have nothing to hide, but their lack of cooperation with my mandate and the fact-finding mission suggests otherwise,” she said.

She was puzzled and disappointed”, since Myanmar’s Ambassador in Geneva Htin Lynn had told the UN Human Rights Council only two weeks ago that it would continue to cooperate.

Now I am being told that this decision to no longer cooperate with me is based on the statement I made after I visited the country in July,” she said.

Lynn did not respond to a request for comment. Neither Zaw Htay, spokesman for Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, nor Kyaw Moe Tun, a spokesman for the ministry of foreign affairs that Suu Kyi heads, were immediately available.

(The featured picture at the top is that Yanghee Lee, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights)

Reporting from Moscow

Russia’s agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection  authority “Rosselkhoznadzor” demanded that preventive steps should be taken in Sri Lanka to secure the safety of tea intended for export to Russia before further discussion on restricted tea imports from Sri Lanka at the end of December, it said in a statement on Tuesday.

Russia’s agriculture safety authority Rosselkhoznadzor  issued red notice  and placed temporary restrictions on imports of tea and all other agricultural products from Sri Lanka from Dec. 18 after a insect known as the Khapra beetle was found in a tea consignment.

The representatives of the safety authority “Rosselkhoznadzor”   met a delegation led by Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Russia in Moscow on Tuesday and officially informed of authority’s decision.

Russia was the second largest buyer of Sri Lanka’s Ceylon tea after Iran and Sri Lankan tea accounts for 23 percent of the Russian market, with other supplies coming from India, Kenya, China and Vietnam,

In 2016 Russia purchased $143 million worth of, tea  according to Sri Lanka’s Industry Ministry

The insect, known as the Khapra beetle, was discovered in the packaging of the consignment of tea from Sri Lanka, which was responded by Sri Lankan authority as  an isolated case and that it would work with the Russian authorities to resolve the issue.

In July 30 2011 similar incident reported in USA. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has enforced a similar federal quarantine order that restricts the importation of rice into the U.S. from countries with known Khapra beetle infestations.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), equivalent of “Rosselkhoznadzor” in Russia,  has  restricted the importation of rice from countries known to have Khapra beetle due to an increasing number of detections at U.S. ports of entry of infested shipments of rice from these countries. The introduction and establishment of Khapra beetle (Trogoderma granarium) into the U.S. poses a serious threat to stored agricultural products, including spices, grains and packaged foods.

This Khapra beetle larvae was found as Los Angeles International Airport in a container of rice included in personal effects being imported earlier this year.

According to APHIS, previous detections of Khapra beetle have resulted in massive, long term-control and eradication efforts at great cost to the American taxpayer. Established infestations are difficult to control because the beetle can survive without food for long periods of time, requires little moisture, hides in tiny cracks and crevices, and is relatively resistant to many insecticides and fumigants.

This year, CBP agriculture specialists have made 100 Khapra beetle interceptions at U.S. ports of entry compared to three to six per year in 2005 and 2006, and averaging about 15 per year from 2007 to 2009.

As the information on temporary restrictions were reached in Colombo, instead of taking a series of corrective actions, President Maithripala Sirisena immediately urged Sri Lankan tea farmers not to panic and he himself tried to play a typical Sri Lankan political gimmick by sending a personal letter to President Putin seeking his influence, politically, to lift the ban.

Mr Sirisena told a rally on Sunday that he was optimistic that as a friendly country”, Russia would help Sri Lanka and insisted that a thorough investigation will be carried out and  punitive measures will be taken against anyone found guilty of tampering with its consignment but without a word on  investigating the spread of Khapra beetle.

Meanwhile Sri Lanka Tea Board Chairman Dr. Rohan Pethiyagoda, a political appointee who has absolutely no clue on tea export, but well experienced taxonomist  worked at an  Australian Museum, imported from Australia after Yahapalanaya government,  told local newspaper We will not take any action against the exporter as the beetle was not found in the tea consignment but, instead within the container outside the tea packages, (A taxonomist is a biologist that groups organisms into categories.)

He was responding to questions from Ceylon Today on whether the future operations of the exporter is to be outlawed since the incident had brought disrepute to the export trading sector and the country.

Pethiyagoda also explained that these containers travel around the world and that it could have happened to any exporter. It has been confirmed that the beetle was not inside the tea packets and therefore no charges could be brought against the exporter, Dr. Pethiyagoda further said.

We are seeking to meet with the Russian Agriculture Minister Aleksandr Tkacev Gaffe and Plantation Industries Minister Navin Dissanayake will be tasked to head the delegation at the talks”, he added.

The delegation will also include officials from the Tea Research Institute and the Agriculture Ministry.

He also added that the private sector component was not relevant at the talks.

Hence, the Tea industry in Sri Lanka is the unfortunate victim of a political corruption, Nepotism and cronyism.

In Russia Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance is the federal organ of executive power, carrying out functions on control and supervision in the field of veterinary science. It establishes and lifts phytosanitary quarantine zones , it controls the use of pesticides and agrochemicals, it maintains soil fertility, it is responsible for selection achievements, protection, reproduction and use of objects of animal world (hunting resources) and aquatic biological resources, and it also carries out the functions on protecting the population from animal infectious diseases.

Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance submits to the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation.

Can our politicians and imported taxonomist as Sri Lanka Tea Board Chairman convince Russia’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service authority Rosselkhoznadzor, before end of December, that we have introduced necessary measures to prevent reoccurrence of the same problem in future.

God help Sri Lanka

By Professor Rohan Rajapakse, Senior Professor of Agricultural Biology Dr. Wolly Wijayaratne Senior Lecturer in Pest Management Rajarata University of Sri Lanka

Tea consignments from Sri Lanka to Russia were found to have a Khapra beetle a few days ago. Consequently, Russia restricted the importation of agricultural products from Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan tea, which accounts for about 23% of the Russian tea market, has earned a substantial amount of foreign exchange this year. The current situation, therefore, has affected not only the country’s foreign exchange reserves but also its image as a tea exporter.

Khapra beetle, scientifically named as Trogoderma granarium Everts (Coleoptera: Dermestidae), is a beetle species and a serious pest of nearly 100 food materials. It prefers grain and cereal products but infestations are also reported in dried plant/animal matter, pulses, vegetable seeds, herbs, spices, nuts, copra, dried fruits, and dried products of animal origin (milk powder, skins, dried dog food, dried animal carcasses), certain oil seeds, cocoa. Finally, it has been found in processed tea.

Khapra beetle is ranked among the 100 most destructive invasive insect species in the world. Its danger as a pest is accompanied by its rapid rate of population increase; high level of quantitative and qualitative loss in the infested stored products; ability to survive without food for years, live with low moisture content and undergo adverse environmental conditions in diapause and resistance to many insecticides. Khapra beetle thrives at higher temperatures 32-36ºC and can tolerate heat, desiccation and cold (tolerate up to 50⁰C, 2% moisture content and 2-4⁰C for one year!).

The adult beetle is oblong-oval shaped, 1.6- 3.0 mm long and 0.9-1.7 mm wide. Males are brown to black with indistinct reddish brown markings on the front wings. Females are lighter in colour than males and slightly larger. The adults are covered with hairs. The larvae are about 1.6-1.8 mm long, more than half the body has a tail made of hairs. Larval body is yellowish white, and body hairs are brown. As the larva grows, more body hairs develop and the body colour changes to golden/reddish brown. Mature larva is about 6 mm long and 1.5 mm wide. Khapra beetle can complete up to ten generations in one year depending on the availability of food, favourable tropical (warm) temperature and humidity. A complete life cycle can be as short as 26 days (around 32-35ºC) or as long as 220 days under suboptimal environmental factors.

The detection of khapra beetle includes visual inspections, sampling, use of food baits and pheromone traps. However, the detection of adults is considered difficult as they seek out cracks and crevices in packing materials, conveyances and storage facilities. In contrast, the larva can comparatively be detected easily during inspections; the presence of accumulated cast larval skins makes it easy.

Khapra beetle is considered native to India and was first reported in 1894. By now it is present in more than 40 countries in the Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe, especially near the equator where dry and hot environment exists. Khapra beetle has been sighted on several occasions in Sri Lanka. Jonathan Banks (1977) has reported its presence in Sri Lanka. Vayssiere and Lepesme (1938), Cotton (1954, 1955), Erturk (1956), Kiritani and Utida (1956) have reported this species to be present in Sri Lanka whereas Fernando (1963) denies that. Hinton (1945) has reported the presence of this species in Ceylon. Currently, the US has listed Sri Lanka as a country which harbours khapra beetle. European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO) also had declared Sri Lanka as a country affected by Khapra beetle Trogoderma granarium but no records have been found as updated in 2006 (http://pqr.eppo.org/datas/TROGGA/TROGGA.pdf). CABI Crop Protection Compendium (2007 edition) also revealed this species is present in Sri Lanka. However, there are no records of its exact presence in made tea in Sri Lanka except the fact that it could be present in packing materials or discarded tea more importantly, khapra beetle is present in our neighbourhood India, Pakistan and also in many African countries. This geographical distribution pattern coincides with the ability of this insect species to establish well under warm climatic conditions. The pest could thrive on the packing materials used as the larvae are known to diapause effectively until it finds a suitable host.

Digressing to the control methods, it is obvious that they need to be sought with care to prevent their unacceptable negative impacts on consumers. Residual chemical insecticides are not recommended for commodities such as tea due to the possibility of leaving insecticide residues in made tea. Surface treatments also have limited success as the diapausing larvae of khapra beetle hide in cracks and crevices, limiting its exposure to the mortality factors. Fumigation has been very successful against khapra beetle. Methyl bromide is very effective against stored-product insects but its use is now restricted due to ozone depleting effect. Phosphine has demonstrated mixed results as the resistance by khapra beetle to this fumigant is also reported despite its successful control. Sulfuryl fluoride is a new fumigant used in North America for the disinfestations of stored products against pests but unfortunately not yet registered in Sri Lanka. This fumigant has been very effective against khapra beetle. Also, exposure to a mixture of carbon dioxide and another fumigant increases the susceptibility of insects to a fumigant. In Sri Lanka, the use of botanical Neem powder has desirable effect of controlling the larvae

Insect growth regulators affect insects and have minimum effects on human and other vertebrates. Methoprene is very effective against many stored-product insects and is registered in North America for agricultural pest management.

Advanced technology is available and used in the developed world for the management of khapra beetle. Vacuum-hermetic technology is one of the latest methods which completely kill the eggs and thus a good quarantine method. Heat treatment is also a good alternative for the use of chemical but accompanies limitations such as infrastructure prerequisites, cost factor and experiments are needed to ascertain its full potential. In the past, khapra beetle was controlled when the infested commodity (grain) was pneumatically conveyed several times but this method has not been attempted recently.

Irradiation by gamma or other rays is also effective against khapra beetle and is used in certain developed countries in stored-product protection but its use is hindered by factors such as the consumer concerns.

It is very difficult and expensive to eradicate this pest. It is up to experienced entomologists to find workable solutions to exclude the presence of khapra beetle in tea so as to help preserve Sri Lanka’s image as an exporter of high quality tea. Unfortunately, there has been no systemic survey for the past 35 years or so, to detect the presence and possible entry of khapra beetle here. Lack of attention to this insect species in Sri Lanka has caused considerable damage to the Sri Lankan export market. Immediate action is called for to overcome this serious pest damage. Entomologists with experience on stored-product pests in the country along with TRI entomologists have to take the lead in handling this national issue.

Dilrook Kannangara

As usual Sri Lankan policymakers and advisors have missed the woods for the trees. The pro-US and anti-Russian regime in Colombo has now resorted to begging to win back the Russian tea market. They cannot see beyond their cuppa. There are much larger issues at play in tea exports to Russia than an insect.

At the moment Sri Lankan tea exports are paid in US dollars and euro. Russia is moving away from these currencies. Global US dollar domination is challenged by Russia and China. They prefer their own currency. Aggravating this is the series of US sanctions on Russia since 2013. As a result, Russia has a dearth of US dollars or any other foreign currency for that matter to pay for its imports.

Since 2013 Russia entered into a number of agreements with other countries to trade in each other’s currency.

Sri Lanka will have to forego the luxury of receiving hard currency for its tea exports to Russia and get used to be paid in roubles. This restricts Sri Lanka as it has a trade surplus against Russia (more exports to Russia than imports). Where can Sri Lanka spend its roubles? If converted, the value is greatly lost as roubles is not a currency in demand especially since 2013.

Indonesia, for instance, has grasped the opportunity. Just August this year, Indonesia entered into a ‘barter agreement’ with Russia to buy Russian Su-35 fighter jets (considered best in the world) in exchange for tea, coffee and palm oil. It benefits both countries and complies with Russia’s rejection of US dollars.

https://www.rt.com/business/398874-tea-coffee-su-indonesia-russia/

This will establish Indonesia as a regular and constant tea exporter to Russia replacing Sri Lanka. Unlike Sri Lanka where tea plantations are running at a loss and tea plantation workers’ representatives are kingmakers, Indonesia manages the industry well. Indonesia has tremendous potential than Sri Lanka in tea trade even without the Russia deal. Bartering is set to become a new economics frontier.

Iran is another country that has agreed to Russian terms in avoiding US dollars and Iran is a rising tea grower. Russia and Iran tea trade has increased recently. India is also looking to increase tea exports to Russia as is a member of BRICS headed by Russia.

However, Sri Lanka doesn’t have even this avenue. To make matters worse in the trade front, President Sirisena implemented a policy to phase out cancer causing asbestos by 2020. Largest asbestos supplier to Sri Lanka is Russia. The already imbalanced trade between the two countries will worsen. Lifting the asbestos ban is even more disastrous.

One may argue that Sri Lanka should also diversify purchases from Russia and include weapons. Sri Lanka did try it by buying a Russian warship. However, the impact of this is losing all the tea earnings to mostly needless weapons! How can Sri Lanka pay for its massive trade deficit if no dollars or other import replacements are received from tea exports to Russia?

US sanctions on Russia is set to worsen as the two countries are becoming adversaries in many fronts. The latest is the Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (INF) Treaty signed in 1987. Both are in violation and blame each other. USA has already threated more economic sanctions on Russia over it. When it happens, Sri Lanka’s case will worsen.

Tea plantations industry is an unprofitable, destructive and worthless industry; a sad remnant from the colonial past of plunder, slavery and environmental destruction. This is the perfect storm to look at it critically.

Sarath Wijesinghe (former Ambassador to U A E and Israel- Solicitor Attorney- at- Law)

TEA IS OUR PRIDE

Tea is our pride, for which we can be proud of for the reason that it is the best tea on the Globe. It is the duty of every Sri Lankan- especially the Diplomatic Missions worldwide to defend and promote our silver inherited as much as the beauty of Sri Lanka which is no match to other. Sri Lanka Tea is unique due to unique flavour, colour and character which cannot be readily found elsewhere. The humidity, cool temperature, sunshine, and rainfall (two monsoons) in the country’s central and southern highlands are conducive to the manufacture of unique quality teas. Tea plantations are scenic and pristine. Tea is grown handpicked and processed in an artisanal process, unchanged over a century. Where else in the world one could find this combination in One Island?. Tea has been one of our main exports and a main source of income for decades as a leader in tea trade.

MOST CONSUMED DRINK NEXT TO WATER

Tea is the most consumed drink of the mankind next to water. It is very healthy harmless and a natural drink which is consumed as a social drink which bonds families countries including Sri Lanka (Once Ceylon) which has now losing the position as the main exporter to the world. Tea grown area is limited due to shortage of land, and the cost of production has become unbearable mainly due to the shortage and high wages of labour and maintained. Estate owners do not invest on replanting and new plantations due to excessive expenditure and the length of period for a return, though once the tea is properly grown the benefit will extend to few decades. But in an era citizens are looking for quick and large margins on profits, traditional investors on cultivation are rare. This is a sad and a disturbing situation. It is time the local investors and tea estate owners are encouraged for re plantation and/or use tea estates for Tea Tourism for which the environment is ideal due to landscape and beauty in addition to the availability. Tourists, especially those from Middle East are full of praise and love for Tea Estates for beauty, calm environment and greenery coupled with sceneries. It is time the tourist Board and the Tea Board engage in an exploratory expedition on this area to benefit the tourist industry as well as tea industry and both industries in return will be boosted with unexpected publicity for both areas. If no remedial steps are taken by the Governance and Tea Board the tea industry and our pride is bound to collapse! Our competitors are aggressively promote tea and tea industry with new plantations with the use of new technology when Sri Lanka is lagging behind miles away.

UNHEALTHY FAST FOOL AND BEVERAGES

It is a sorry affair that people have got used to unhealthy fast food and beverages with strong chemicals and poisonous materials. However the concerns are raised and advice given to discourage unhealthy breweries and encourage healthy and natural drinks, the billions spend on advertisements and attractions have overtaken the campaigners for natural drinks which are healthy, cheap and readily available. Sadly in Sri Lanka coffee with lot of sugar is available in parties and officers increasing diabetic population when tea is freely available in every corner. A young coconut is only 30 rupees whereas artificial beverage with lot of sugar and chemicals will cost over 50 rupees, which passes billion of rupees to multinational companies. Ironically average youngster and even an adult will go for the unhealthy artificial beverage in place of a natural young coconut or a healthy cup of tea. India is far above us. They have banned artificial beverages and multinational companies from the Indian soil. It is sad but true that the standard of tea and tea industry is fast fading away and it is difficult to find good and quality tea in the nation of tea. It is a pity Sri Lankans do not take the best use of tea grown here.

RUSSIA SRI LANKAN DISPUTE – MAIN CRISIS IN TEA MARKET TODAY

Sri Lankan tea is marketed and popular in Russia. The most important foreign markets for Sri Lankan tea are the former Soviet bloc countries of the CIS, The United Arab Emirates, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Iran, the United Kingdom, Egypt, Libya, and Japan. The political situation in some countries has a direct effect on Ceylon Tea and it is time for us to look for alternatives until the situation in the Middle East settles. Arab world and West considers Tea as a healthy smooth traditional social drink. The consumption patterns has changed due to fast life by adopting quicker methods such as tea bags instead of traditional pot of tea, or

naturally made tea traditionally for quiet and smooth enjoyment. Still tea is synonymous with Ceylon with the brand and the trade mark for pure original and quality tea. Awareness and demand for Ceylon Tea among consumers in the Gulf Market is high. Loose tea consumption has dominated over consumption of tea bags. Consumers are gradually weaned away from loose quality tea due to aggressive media campaigns and fast life of consumers. Multinational brands increase their market share through heavy media/promotional spend and sophisticated packaging, despite using infer ere multi origin teas” The brand becomes more significant than the origin. This trend is seen in former Ceylon strongholds such as Russia and former Soviet Republics. Russia has imported about 30 million kilograms of tea from Sri Lanka for the last 10 months of 2017 being2915million worth $23 million kilograms which is 12% of total exports from Sri Lanka, which is suddenly banned from 18th December 2017 for the presence of a beetle named Troderma Granarium” which is a biggest blow on Sri Lankan economy in the country of a crisis situation. President Sirisena promptly sent a letter to President Putin requesting the ban and made public announcements of the request which one wonders whether it is premature without studying the ground situation and proper inquiry as communication and request between heads of two states should be carefully and diplomatically manure as the presence of one Beatle is so insignificant though the impact on our economy is a major blow. It is necessary to find out whether there are any other reasons behind including the asbestoses ban from Russia and the straining of international relations with the socialist block supporting Sri Lanka traditionally and throughout due to over affiliations with the west tracing back strained relations with USSR/Russia during Untied National party regimes from 1948.

WAY FORWARD TO SAVE PROTECT AND MAINTAIN OUR PRIDE

The statement by the controversial former Ambassador to Russia Udayanga Weeratunga, on the issue on tea trade and the alleged previous warnings by him on the crisis is of great importance and significance as he himself is alleged to be involved in tea trade successfully while maintaining good relations with traders during the previous regime. Our concern is our nation and economy and it is our duty and wishes are to prey and work towards a resolution of the issue as early as possible without aggravating it any longer. Obviously in this instance it is premature for the head of the state to make public statements without proper understanding and study the ground situation in diplomatic and international spheres of the areas of international relations and highest standards of statesmanship carefully taking minor incidents to the international arena. Let this be an eye opener to revisit our strategies in international relations and business dealings on tea and agriculture as the ban effects the entire agriculture exports to Russia being one of our main exporters. Kenya is our main competitor fast emerging to take our place as the world leader when we have no policy or a strategy to improve our tea industry with long and short policies on replanting, developments of tea factories, control unscrupulous packing in Sri Lanka and overseas including Dubai and UK which are claiming to be tea hubs using our tea as a base product, prevent adulterating our tea giving access to the tea traders poisoning and destroying our image and tea industry. We wish the representation by the Ministers visiting Russia will be a success, but the fact remains that it is temporary and long term strategy and concerted efforts are required long and short term to maintain the good will based on quality and image building in the country the Tea Board has not taken any steps for promotion and publicity for the last decade. Let us wait for the statesmanship, and goodwill of the

lanka C news

බෙදුම්වාදයට, අධිරාජ්‍යවාදයට, ඉන්දියානු ව්‍යාප්තවාදයට එරෙහි මාවතේ, එනම් මේ රටේ ස්වෛරීභාවයට, නිදහසට පක්ෂපාතී මාවතේ ඉදිරියට යනු විනා දේශද්‍රෝහී සතුරු කල්ලිවල අගුපිල්වල ලගින දේශපාලන ගමනක් තමන්ට නැතැයි ජාතික නිදහස් පෙරමුණේ නායක විමල් වීරවංශ මහතා අවධාරණය කරයි.

රාජගිරියේ පැවති ජනසමුළුවක් අමතමින් ඒ මහතා මෙසේ අවධාරණය කළේය.

එහිදී වැඩිදුරටත් අදහස් දැක්වූ විමල් වීරවංශ මහතා මෙසේ ද පැවසීය.

2015 ජනවාරි 08 වැනිදා ඔබෙත් මගෙත් මාතෘභූමිය සතුරු බලඇණියක ගොදුරක් බවට පත් වූ බව අද කවුරුත් පිළිගන්නා සත්‍යය බවට පත් වී තිබෙනවා. දේශපාලන ස්ථාවරභාවයක් තිබූ, සමාජීය සාමය දිනා ගෙන තිබූ, යම් ආර්ථික වර්ධනයක් ලබා ගෙන තිබූ, රටක් ලෙස ඒ වන විට අප සෑම අතකින්ම ඉදිරියට යමින් තිබුණා. ඒ රට නැවත අස්ථාවර කරන්න, ආර්ථිකමය වශයෙන් ආපස්සට ඇදලා දමන්න තමයි එදා මේ රූකඩ ආණ්ඩුව බලයට ගෙනාවේ.

‘නීති කඩා ගෙන වැඩ පටන් ගත්තේ’

ජනවාරි 09 වැනිදා ඉර බැහැගෙන යන විට මෛත්‍රීපාල සිරිසේන මහත්තයා ජනාධිපති ධුරයේ දිවුරුම් දුන්නා. ඒ සමගම රටේ අගමැතිවරයා ඉල්ලා අස් වී නොමැති තත්වයක් යටතේ රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ මහතා නීතිවිරෝධීව අගමැති ධුරයේ දිවුරුම් දුන්නා. ඒ විතරක් නොවෙයි ‘ඔබගේ තනතුර බල රහිත වේ’ යනුවෙන් ලිපියක් යවලා එවකට අගවිනිසුරුවරයා ලෙස කටයුතු කළ මොහාන් පීරිස් මහතා ධුරයෙන් ඉවත් කිරීමට ජනාධිපතිවරයා කටයුතු කළා. තමන්ට නැති බලයක් ආරෝපණය කර ගෙන තමයි ජනාධිපතිවරයා එහෙම කළේ. මේ ආණ්ඩුව වැඩ පටන් ගත්තේ ඒ විදියට නීති කඩා ගෙනයි. ‘තිබුණු ආණ්ඩුවට වඩා හොදින් නීතිය රකිනවා’ කියා ජනතාවට පොරොන්දු දුන් මේ ආණ්ඩුව වැඩ පටන් ගත්තේ නීතිය බල්ලට දමලයි.

‘රනිල් වගේ එදා මිගාර වැඩ කළා’

2015 ජනවාරි 08 වැනිදාට පෙර දුන් පොරොන්දු අද ඉටු වෙලා ද? ලැම්බෝගිනි, රත්තරන් අශ්වයෝ සොයාගෙන ද? බේබිලාට නුවරඑළියේ යන්න තිබුණු ‘චොපර් ටික’ සොයාගෙන ද? මේ වෙලාවේ මගේ මතකයට එන්නේ ධාතුසේන රජු සමය. අපේ මාතෘභූමිය දාඨිය, පීඨිය ඇතුළු දකුණු ඉන්දීය ආක්‍රමණිකයන්ගේ ග්‍රහණයට නතු වෙලා තිබූණු අවධියක තමයි, මහා සංඝරත්නයේ ඉල්ලීම පරිදි එක්තරා භික්ෂූන්වහන්සේ නමක් උපැවිදිව මේ ආක්‍රමණිකයන්ට එරෙහිව සටන් වැදීමට සේනා සංවිධානය කළේ. මොහුට හැකි වෙනවා දකුණු ඉන්දීය ආක්‍රමණිකයන් පලවා හැරලා මේ රටේ ස්වදේශික ජනතාවට බලය ලබා දීමට. පසුව ධාතුසේන නමින් රජ වූයේ මෙතුමායි.

දකුණු ඉන්දීය ආක්‍රමණිකයාගේ කාලයේ මේ රටේ මිනිස්සු ගොවිතැන් කළේ එක කන්නයයි. කන්න දෙකක් වගා කිරීමට පුළුවන් පොළොවේ වැව්, අමුණු විනාශ වී තිබුණු නිසා එසේ එක් කන්නයක් පමණක් වගා කිරීමට සිදු වුණා. ආක්‍රමණිකයන්ගේ ග්‍රහණයෙන් මේ රට නිදහස් කර ගත් ධාතුසේන රජතුමා ඉන්පසු කෘෂිකර්මාන්තය නගා සිටුවීමටයි තම අවධානය යොමු කළේ. කලා වැව හදලා කලා වැවේ ජලය රජරට පුරා ගලා ගෙන යාමට යෝධ ඇළ නිර්මාණය වන්නේ ඒ අනුවයි. කලා වැව පමණක් නොවේ තවත් වැව් 18ක් ඒ සමගම නිර්මාණය වෙනවා. 2015 ජනවාරි 08 වැනිදාට පෙර වගේ තමයි, එදා දාඨිය – පීඨියගේ පාලන සමයේ ඔවුන්ගෙන් යැපුණු ජාවාරම්කාර ව්‍යාපාරිකයන් ප්‍රජාව, බත්බැලයන් කටකතා යවන්න පටන් ගත්තා. ‘ධාතුසේන රජ්ජුරුවෝ ඔය වැව් හාරන්නේ ජනතාවට ජලය දෙන නොවෙයි. මැණික් ඉල්ලම් තියෙනවා ද කියලයි ඔය බලන්නේ’ කියලයි එදා කටකතා යැව්වේ.

එදා ආක්‍රමණිකයන්ගේ පාලන කාලයේ ගොවිතැන් බත් නොකර හේනක් කොටා ගෙන ජීවත් වූ මිනිස්සු කම්මැලි වෙලායි හිටියේ. තිස් අවුරුද්දක් තිස්සේ හේනක් කොටා ගෙන අලසකමට හිටපු මිනිස්සු වැව් හාරන්න ආවේ කැමැත්තෙන් නොවෙයි. එවැනි පිරිසක් තුළ ඉහත කී බොරුව ලේසියෙන් පැල කරන්න පුළුවන් වුණා. ධාතුසේන රජතුමාගේ අග බිසවගේ පුතා වුණේ මුගලන් කුමාරයා. අනෙක් බිසවගේ පුතා වුණේ කාශ්‍යප කුමාරයා. කාශ්‍යප කුමාරයාට රජ වීමේ උවමනාවක් තිබුණේ නැහැ. නමුත් ධාතුසේන රජතුමාගේ මහ සෙනෙවි ලෙස කටයුතු කළ මිගාර, රජතුමා තමාට එරෙහිව යන විට කාශ්‍යප කුමාරයාගේ ඔළුවේ රජකම පිළිබඳ සිහිනය පැල කළා. ඒ විතරක් නෙවෙයි ධාතුසේන රජතුමා රජකමින් පහ කරලා කාශ්‍යපට රජකම ලබා දීමේ කුමන්ත්‍රණය දියත් කළා. කාශ්‍යප රජ කළාට එදා ඉදන් රට පාලනය කළේ මිගාර සෙනෙවියායි. හරියට රනිල් වගේමයි.

‘එදා මැණික් – අද රත්තරන්’

එදා මිගාර සෙනෙවියා ධාතුසේන රජතුමාට විරුද්ධව යොදා ගත්තේ ඔහුගේම පුතා කාශ්‍යප. මෙදා නූතන මිගාර හෙවත් රනිල් යොදා ගත්තේ මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ ජනාධිපතිවරයාගේ ඇමතිවරයෙකු වූ මෛත්‍රීපාල සිරිසේන. ඥාතිකමක් නැතත් දෙදෙනාම එකම දේශපාලන කඳවුර නියෝජනය කළ අයයි. එදා කාශ්‍යප රජ වුණාට පස්සේ මිගාර සෙනෙවියාගේ සෙබළුන් පිස්සු බල්ලන් වගේ රට පුරාම වළවල් හාරමින් ‘ධාතුසේන සඟවපු මැණික්’ හොයන්න පටන් ගත්තා. හරියටම මෛත්‍රීපාල සිරිසේන මහත්තයා ජනාධිපති වුණාට පස්සේ රන්ජන් රාමනායකලා කොමඞ් කටේ අත දාලා රත්තරන් හෙව්වා වගේ, මැදමුලනේ ඉඩම් බැකෝ දාලා හාරලා රත්තරන් හෙව්වා වගේ එදත් වැඩ සිද්ධ වුණා. කාශ්‍යප රජ වුණාට ඔහුට රට පාලනය කිරීමේ වුවමනාවක් තිබුණේ නැහැ. ඔහුට වුවමනා වූයේ සීගිරිය කලා නිකේතනයක් බවට පත් කිරීමටයි. ආලකමන්දාවට වී කලාකාමී දිවියක් ගෙවීමයි ඔහුගේ අපේක්ෂාව වුණේ. කාශ්‍යප රජතුමා ආලකමන්දාව නිර්මාණය කිරීමට මුදල් ඉල්ලුවේ මිගාර සෙනෙවියාගෙනුයි. ඔහු ඒ අවස්ථාවේ තමයි ‘ධාතුසේන සඟවපු මැණික් සොයා ගත්තොත් මුදල් දෙන්න පුළුවන්’ කියලා, කාශ්‍යප රජු ලවා රට පුරා වළවල් හාරන්න අවසර ගත්තේ.

කෙසේ නමුත් එදා රට පාලනය කිරීමට සමත් මුගලන් කුමාරයාට රජකම ලබා දීමට කාශ්‍යප රජතුමා එකඟ කරවා ගැනීමට මහා සංඝරත්නය ඇතුළු රටට හිතැති සෙනෙවිවරුන්ට හැකි වුණා. මෙදා පාර නූතන කාශ්‍යපට එහෙම වුවමනාවක් තිබෙනවා කියා පෙනෙන්නේ නැහැ. දැන් නූතන මිගාර සහ නූතන කාශ්‍යප රණ්ඩු වෙවී, යාළු වෙවී ඉදිරියට යන බවයි පෙනෙන්නෙ. දෙන්නා අතර ඇත්ත ගෝරියක් තිබෙනවා නම් ඒක බැදුම්කර කොමිෂන් සභා වාර්තාවෙන් බලා ගන්න පුළුවන්. ‘රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ අගමැතිවරයා බැඳුම්කර වංචාවට වගකිව යුතුයි’ කියා තිබුණොත් දෙන්නා අතර ඇත්ත ගෝරියක් තිබෙනවා කියා පිළිගත හැකියි.

‘තරුණයන්ට ෆ්‍රී වයි-ෆයි වෙනුවට කොන්ඩම්’

අද විපක්ෂ නායක ආර්. සම්බන්ධන් ප්‍රසිද්ධියේ පවසනවා, ‘මේ ආණ්ඩුව ගෙන ආවේ බටහිර රටවල් සහ ඉන්දියාවේ වුවමනාවට’ කියා. එදා දකුණු ඉන්දීය ආක්‍රමණිකයන්ගේ හිතවත් බලවේග ධාතුසේන පලවා හැරලා කාශ්‍යප නැමැති රූකඩ පාලකයකු බලයට ගෙන ආවා තමන්ගේ වුවමනාවන් ඉටු කරවා ගැනීමට. අදත් රට එක්සේසත් කළ මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ පලවා හැරලා රූකඩ ආණ්ඩුවක් බලයට ගෙන ආවේ බටහිර බලවතුන්ගේ හා ඉන්දියාවේ වුවමනාවන් ඉටු කරවා ගැනීමටයි. ඇමරිකා එක්සත් ජනපදයේ ‘පෙන්ටගනය’ මුදල් වියදම් කරලා ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ ජනතාවගෙ ප්‍රශ්න විසඳන්න පුළුවන් ආණ්ඩුවක් බලයට ගෙන ඒවි ද? බලන්න, මේ ආණ්ඩුව දුන් පොරොන්දු කිසිවක්වක් ඉටු කාළා ද? අද වොක්ස්වැගන් වාහන හැදෙනවා ද? තරුණයන්ට ෆ්‍රී වයි ෆයි ලැබුණ ද? ඒ වෙනුවට දැන් කොන්ඩම් නොමිලේ දෙන්න මධ්‍යස්ථාන පන්සීයක් නම් හදනවාලු

‘ආණ්ඩුවේ වැරදි ප්‍රතිපත්තිය’

අපි එදා ආණ්ඩුවක් ලෙස ආඩම්බරයට කීවේ රට ‘සහලින් – බඩ ඉරිගුවලින් ස්වයංපෝෂණය කළා’ කියලයි. අද අගමැතිවරයා ආඩම්බරයෙන් කියන්නේ ‘අපි හාල්, පොල්, එළවළු සියල්ල පිටරටින් ගේනවා’ කියලයි. හෙට අනිද්දා කියයි ‘අපි බත් පැකට් එකම පිටරටින් ගේනවා’ කියලා. මේ විදිහට හැම දෙයක්ම පිටරටින් ගෙනෙන්න ගියාම රටේ තිබෙන ඩොලර් ටික පිටරට යනවා. ප්‍රතිඵලය තමයි රුපියල අවප්‍රමාණය වීම. සියල්ල පිටරටින් ගෙන ඒමේ මේ ආණ්ඩුවේ වැරදි ප්‍රතිපත්තිය විසින් තමයි අපේ රට මේ විෂම චක්‍රයට හසු කර ඇත්තේ.

පොහොර සහනාධාර කප්පාදු කිරීමෙන් ගොවියා වී වගාවෙන් ඈත් කළා. ඒ වගේම කෘෂිකාර්මික බෝග වගාව හැම අතින්ම කඩාවැට්ටුවා. දැන් බලන්න අපේ ප්‍රධාන අපනයන බෝගයට සිදුව ඇති දෙය. අපේ ප්‍රධානම තේ ගැනුම්කරුවා රුසියාවයි. ගැටලුකාරී තත්වයක් නිසා රුසියාව ශ්‍රී ලංකාවෙන් තේ මිලදී ගැනීම අත්හිටුවා තිබෙනවා. රුසියාවට මාස දෙකහමාරක් තේ යැව්වාම අගමැති රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ මහත්තයා චීනයට හම්බන්තොට වරාය විකුණලා උපයා ගත්තු මුදල හොයා ගන්න පුළුවන්. රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ මහත්තයට හැම දෙයක්ම පෙනෙන්නේ වාණිජ භාණ්ඩයක් විදිහටයි. නමුත් ගෙදර ගියාම නෝනාව නම් එහෙම පේන්නේ නැහැ. ඒ නිසා එයා බේරිලා ඉන්නවා. (සභාවේ සිනා) හම්බන්තොට වරාය, මත්තල ගුවන් තොටුපළ, එයාර් ලංකා, ශ්‍රී ලංකා රක්ෂණය, ත්‍රිකුණාමල වරායේ තෙල් ටැංකි, කොළඹ වරායේ නැගෙනහිර පර්යන්තය දුටු විට රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහට ඇති වෙන්නේ විකුණන් කෑමේ මනසයි. ඒකනේ එයාට සමහරු ‘වික්කමසිංහ’ කියන්නේ. රටේ ජාතික සම්පත් විකුණ ගෙන කෑමට අමතරව බලයට ඇවිත් දින 20න් මේ රටේ මහ බැංකුව කොල්ලකෑමට මේ අයට හැකි වුණා. රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ මහ මොළකරු ලෙස කටයුතු කළ මේ මහා කොල්ලයෙන් රටට සිදුවූ පාඩුව රුපියල් ට්‍රිලියනයක් බව ලක්ෂ්මන් යාපා ඇමතිවරයා පවසා තිබුණා. හිටපු අධිකරණ අමාත්‍ය, එජාප පාර්ලිමේන්තු මන්ත්‍රී විජයදාස රාජපක්ෂ මහත්තයා කියන විදිහට මේ බැදුම්කර මගඩිය ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ ඉතිහාසයේ සිදු වූ ලොකුම හොරකමයි. අද අගමැතිවරයාගේ ඡායාරූප වී ඇත්තේ හම්බන්තොට වරාය විකුණන් කාලා ලැබුණු චෙක් එක සමඟ ගත්තු ඡායාරූප. අද සංවර්ධන ක්‍රියාදාමය, විවෘත කිරීම්වල ඡායාරූප වෙනුවට ඇත්තේ ජාතික සම්පත් විකුණාගෙන කෑමේ ඡායාරූප පමණයි. මේ සියල්ලෙන් සිදු වන්නේ රටේ ආර්ථිකය බිඳ වැටීම.

අනෙක් පැත්තෙන් අද සිදු වෙමින් පවතින්නේ කුමක්ද? ධාතුසේන දාඨිය පිඨියලා සමඟ, දුටුගැමුණු එළාර සමඟ, මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ වේළුපිල්ලේ පිරබාහරන් සමඟ, සටන්වැදී බේරාගත්තු රට අද තෑගි ඔප්පුවකින් (බෙදුම්වාදී ව්‍යවස්ථාවකින්) බෙදුම්වාදී කල්ලිවලට බාර දෙන්න හදනවා. මේ සියල්ල කර ගන්න තමයි, බටහිර රටවල්වලට, ඉන්දියාවට, දෙමළ ඩයස්පෝරාවට 2015 ජනවාරි 08 බල පෙරළිය වුවමනා වුණේ. ඒ නිසා ජනතාවට දුන් පොරොන්දු ඉටු නොකළාට, මේ රූකඩ ආණ්ඩුව බටහිරට, ඉන්දියාවට, ඩයස්පෝරාවට දුන් පොරොන්දු අද ඉටු කරමින් සිටිනවා.

‘අලුත් ව්‍යවස්ථාවක් යටතේ නිදහස සැමරීම’

ඒ අනුව දැන් මංගල සමරවීර ඇමතිවරයාගේ කටින් කියවෙනවා, ‘ඊළඟ නිදහස් දිනය සමරන්නේ අලුත් ව්‍යවස්ථාවක් යටතේ’ කියලා. මේක තමයි ඔවුන්ගේ සැලැස්ම. අපේ අවධානය ඡන්දයට යොමු වෙලා තිබියදී මේ ව්‍යවස්ථා සංශෝධනය හොර රහසේම පාර්ලිමේන්තුවට ගෙන ඒම. පාර්ලිමේන්තුව 2018 ජනවාරි අග තෙක් කල් තබා තිබුණත් හදිසියේම යළි කැඳවා බෙදුම්වාදී ව්‍යවස්ථා සංශෝධන පනත් කෙටුම්පත සම්මත කර ගන්නයි හදන්නෙ. ඡන්දය පෙබරවාරි 10 වැනිදා. නිදහස් දිනය පෙබරවාරි 4 වැනිදා. ඉතින් ඡන්දයට කලින් ව්‍යවස්ථා සංශෝධනය ගෙන එන්නයි ඔවුන්ගේ සුූදානම.

‘බකට්වලට මේ දවස්වල හොඳ මිලක්’

බකට් පත්තු කරන්නේ වෙසක් කාලයටනේ. වෙසක් එන තෙක් බකට් පැත්තකින් තියලා මුදලාලි බලන් ඉන්නවා. මේ බකට් විකිණෙන කාලයයි. වෙසක් කාලයට වගේ ඡන්ද කාලයට සිරිසේන මහත්තයගෙ ලංසුව වැඩියි. ලංසුව වැඩි වුණාම විකිණෙන ගාණත් වැඩි වෙනවා. ඒ ජවනිකාවන් ඉදිරියේදී රඟ දැක්වෙනවා. ඒවා දිහා ජනතාව බලා ඉන්න කොට බෙදුම්වාදී ව්‍යවස්ථා සංශෝධනය හොර රහසේම ගෙන එනවා.

වෙන ආණ්ඩුවක් ආවොත් යළි විකුණපු සම්පත් පවරා ගන්න පුළුවන්, ආර්ථිකය යළි ගොඩනඟා ගන්න පුළුවන්, දේශපාලන ස්ථාවරභාවය යළි ඇති කරගන්නත් පුළුවන්. නමුත් රටේ මූලික නීතිය, ආණ්ඩුක්‍රම ව්‍යවස්ථාව බෙදුම්වාදීන්ට වුවමනා ආකාරයට වෙනස් කළහොත් යළි එය ආපස්සට හරවන්න වෙන ආණ්ඩුවකටත් අමාරුයි. ඒ වගේම එට්කා ගිවිසුම ගහලා ඉන්දියාවට මේ රටේ සේවා ආර්ථිකය විවෘත කරලා දුන්නොත් එය ආපස්සට හැරවීමට වෙන ආණ්ඩුවකටත් අමාරුයි. එම අරාජිකත්වය නිර්මාණය කරන මාවතේයි මේ ආණ්ඩුව යමින් සිටින්නේ.

‘ලැජ්ජා බය නැති අගමැති’

මේ ආණ්ඩුව අද විකාර වැඩ කරමින් ඉන්නවා. කහ ඉර සුදු කළා. දැන් නෙළුම් කුළුණේ නෙළුම් පොහොට්ටුව කොළ පාට කරනවා . මේවා මොළේ කළඳක් තියෙන ආණ්ඩුවක් කරන වැඩ ද? මෙයා ‘බය නැති අගමැති’ නොවෙයි, ‘ලැජ්ජා බය නැති අගමැති’ කියලා නම් හොඳට පෙනෙනවා. පාට මාරු කිරීමට අමතරව පාසල් නිල ඇඳුම් රෙදි වෙනුවට වවුචරයක් දෙනවා. ඒකත් විකාරයක්. ඒ දෙන මුදල් රෙදි ගන්න ප්‍රමාණවත් නැහැ. දෙවන කාරණය සිංහල, දෙමළ, මුස්ලිම් සිසුන්ට අසමාන ගණන් සහිත වවුචර් දීම. මුස්ලිම් ගැහැණු ළමයින් හැර අනිත් අයට අසමාන ගණන්වල වවුචර් දීමේ පදනම කුමක්ද? නිකම් ජාතිවාදය ඇවිස්සීමක් විතරයි එතන තියෙන්නේ. වවුචරයේ ජනාධිපති, අගමැති, අධ්‍යාපන ඇමති යන තුන්දෙනාගේම පින්තූර දාලා තියෙනවා. මේක ගන්න දවසට දරුවන්ට වමනය නොයන පෙත්තක් දීලා පාසල් යවන්න දෙමාපියන්ට සිදු වෙලා තියෙනවා. දැන් පෙළ පොත් ගන්නත් වවුචරයක් දෙන්න යනවා. ඒ වවුචරය සියලු පෙළ පොත් මිල දී ගන්න ප්‍රමාණවත් නැහැ. අද මේ ආණ්ඩුව නිදහස් අධ්‍යාපනය කනවා. අනවශ්‍ය විකාර කරනවා.

‘රට වළට ඇද දැම්මා. ගම දුන්නොත්…’

අද රටට සිදු වෙමින් තිබෙන විපත පටු පක්ෂ කණ්නාඩිවලින් බලන්න එපා. 2015 ජනවාරි 08 වැනිදාට කලින් අපි මේ රටේ ජනතාවට අනතුරු ඇඟවීමක් සිදු කළා. එය එදා ඇතැම් අය පිළිගත්තේ නැහැ. නමුත් අද ඒ කියූ දේවල් එලෙසම සිදු වන බව කාටත් පෙනෙනවා. එදා රතු අලි පැටව් කැටයම් දාලා කියපු විකට කතාවලට මේ රටේ ඇතැම් ජනතාව රැවටුණා. එදා අනුර දිසානායක කීවා ‘පෝට්සිටිය හදන්න ලංකාවෙම තිබෙන කළුගල් මදි. ජා – ඇල, හලාවත, හික්කඩුව දක්වා මුහුදු තීරය විනාශ වෙනවා’ කියලා. නමුත් රනිල් ඇවිත් තවත් වැඩිපුර අක්කර දෙසීයක් සමඟ පෝට්සිටිය හදන්න අවසර දුන්නා. දැන් රතු අලි පැටියා ඒ ගැන කටක් අරින්නේ නැහැ. චම්පික රණවක එදා කිව්වා, ‘පෝට්සිටිය මහා විනාශයක්’ කියලා. නමුත් අද කියනවා, ‘පෝට්සිටිය මේ රටේ ආර්ථිකයේ මූලයයි’ කියලා.

එදා අනුර දිසානායක කිව්වේ ‘හම්බන්තොට වරාය කියන්නේ ගලක්. ඒක තමයි නාමල් බේබිලාට නාන්න හදපු ‘ස්විමිං පූල් එක’ කියලයි. දැන් ඒ කටින්ම කියනවා, ‘හම්බන්තොට වරාය වැනි ජාතික සම්පත් විකුණා දැමීම ජාතික අපරාධයක්’ කියලා. ‘ස්විමිං පූල් එකක්’ නම් චීනා කීයක් හරි දීලා ගත්තාම මොකද වෙන්නේ? ඒ නිසා තේරුම් ගන්න, ‘මේ අය තමයි ජාතියේ ඇස්වලට වැලි ගැහුවෙ’ කියා. මෛත්‍රීපාල සිරිසේන බලයට ගෙනල්ලා මේ රට වළට ඇදලා දමපු මේ රතු අලි පැටව් අද කියනවා ‘ගම අපට දෙන්න’ කියලා. ජනවාරි 08 වැනිදා රට වළට ඇද දමපු අයට ගම දුන්නොත් ගමත් වළටම ඇද දමයි.

‘අගුපිල්වල ලගින්නේ නැහැ’

දැන කටකතා පතුරනවා. ‘අරයා යනවා. මෙයා යනවා’ කියනවා. මමත් යනවලු. මමත් සද්ද නැතුව අහගෙන ඉන්නවා යනවානම්නේ කලබල වෙන්න ඕනේ. අපි යන පාර තමයි මේ පාර. ජනතා විමුක්ති පෙරමුණේ සිටියදීත් අපි ගියේ ජාතිකවාදී පාරේ, අධිරාජ්‍ය විරෝධී පාරේ. ජනතා විමුක්ති පෙරමුණ ඒ දෑහිතකාමී පාරෙන් ඉවත් වෙලා කියලා අද ඕනෑම කෙනෙකුට පෙනෙනවා. අපි එදා ගියපු පාරේම තවමත් ඉදිරියටම යමින් සිටිනවා. බෙදුම්වාදයට, අධිරාජ්‍යවාදයට, ඉන්දියානු ව්‍යාප්තවාදයට එරෙහි මාවතේ, මේ රටේ ස්වෛරීභාවයට, නිදහසට පක්ෂපාතී මාවතේ තමයි හෙටත් අනිද්දාත් අපි ගමන් කරන්නේ. ‘ඒ මාවතේ මිස අගුපිල්වල ලගින දේශපාලන ගමනක් අපි ගාව නැහැ’ කියා අපි මේ රටේ ජනතාවටට අවධාරණය කරනවා. දේශද්‍රෝහී හතුරු කල්ලිවල අගුපිල්වල ලගින්න සමහර ඇම්බැට්ටයන්ට පුළුවන් වුණාට අපට එහෙම කරන්න පුළුවන්කමක් නැහැ. අපිට විකිණෙනවා නම් හත්මුතු පරම්පරාවම ගොඩ යන ගණනකට විකිණෙන්න පුළුවන්.

‘ජයග්‍රහණයෙන් පසුව මිස කොඩිය අත හරින්නේ නැහැ’

අපි විකිණෙනවානම් විකිණෙන්න තිබුණේ මීට කලින්. මේ ආණ්ඩුව බලයට ආපු ගමන් පළමුව අත්අඩංගුවට ගත්තේ තිස්ස අත්තනායක මහත්තයාවයි. දෙවනුව අත්අඩංගුවට ගත්තේ මගේ බිරිඳ. පසුව සහෝදරයා අත්අඩංගුවට ගත්තා. මාව අත්අඩංගුවටට අරන් මාස 3ක් රඳවා ගෙන සිටියා. එතැනදී බැලුවා මම මානසිකව වැටිලා ද කියා. ඒ කවර තර්ජන, කුමන්ත්‍රණ ආවත් අපි දේශද්‍රෝහී හතුරු කල්ලිවල අගුපිල්වල ලගින්න ගියේ නැහැ. මේ සියල්ලෙන් පෙනෙන්නේ සතුරාට අපව අභියෝගයක්, තර්ජනයක් බවයි. ඒක නැවත නැවතත් මතක් කර දීම පිළිබඳව අපි සතුරාට ස්තුතිවන්ත වෙනවා. ‘ඒ නිසා සතුරු කඳවුරේ මහත්වරුනි, නුඹලා කවර ආයුධවලින් පහර දුන්නත් අපි අතට ගත්තු කොඩිය ජයග්‍රහණයෙන් පසුව මිස අත් හරින්නෙ නැහැ’ කියා සහතික වෙනවා.

එස්. බී. දිසානායක කියනවා, මමත් ළඟදීම ඒවිලු. එයා හිතාගෙන ඉන්නේ අපිත් එයා වගෙයි කියලයි. එස්.බී.ට වගේ බඩගිනි වුණාම අපිට අසූචි කන්න බැහැ. ඒ නිසා එස්.බී.ලා දැනගන්න ඕනෑ තමන්ගේ මට්ටමින් අනුන් ගැන නොසිතන්න. මේ ඡන්දය ‘පුංචි ඡන්දය’ ලෙස සැහැල්ලුවට ගන්න එපා. මේක තමයි මේ දේශද්‍රෝහී ආණ්ඩුවට ‘නුඹලාට බහුතරයක් නැහැ. ගෙදර පලයල්ලා’ කියා රතු සංඥාව දෙන ඡන්දය. ඒ රතු සංඥාව ලබා දීම සඳහා පටු වාද භේද අතහැර වෙහෙස වෙමු! කැපවෙමු!”

KAMALIKA PIERIS

Revised 8.9.18, 29.3.19

The Human Rights Council of the UN is, as its name indicates, the UN body which deals with human rights. The human rights position of all UN member countries come up before the HRC on periodic review, every four years. HRC has no power over UN member countries.  It cannot impose sanctions, but it can pass resolutions on a country, on majority vote, whether that country likes it or not.

HRC has three regular sessions per year, in March, June and September. HRC can also   hold a special session at any time, to address human rights violations, if one third of the HRC panel requests it. That was how the 11th Special Session of the HRC was convened in 2009 to consider the situation in Sri Lanka, just one week after the conflict came to an end.

The  Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is a separate body. Its remit is to promote and protect the human rights that are guaranteed under international law and stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. The Office is headed by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, who co-ordinates human rights activities throughout the UN System and supervises the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

OHCHR    has a list of ‘experts’ given ‘mandates’ to report and advice on human rights of specific countries. There are also the HRC ‘Special Rapporteurs’, about 25 of them, one  for each Human Right. These experts serve in their personal capacity, and do not receive pay for their work, which hopefully, ensures their independence and impartiality. OHCHR provides staffing and logistical support  for these experts.

Over the years,  instead of keeping the UN as a  skeleton organization servicing the needs of member states and acting as a meeting place for them, the western powers have piled more and more tasks on the UN system and then funded these activities. This has created a great dependency on  voluntary contribution to keep the system going.  The UN  now depends on ten to 15 western countries, and these countries have used the UN to further their foreign policies. In order to retain their jobs the UN officials, starting from the UN Secretary General , have to please these donors.

The  situation is the same in the HRC. Western countries have a hold on the HRC because  they provide most of the funds. HRC is not fully funded by the UN.  Other UN agencies have budgets of over billion dollars, HCR had only 97 million per year in 2013. HRC  web page even   calls for donations. HRC depends on voluntary contributions from member states to  carry out its functions. Two thirds of the budget comes from western countries, such as USA, Canada, Norway, EU  and their transnational corporations.

Since it provides most of the funds, the western countries have much power in the HRC. They control appointments to the HRC and OCHRC. There are unusually high numbers from US, UK, France, Germany, even Italy in the HRC  said Pathfinder Foundation. Some junior staff are paid directly by member countries.

OCHRC is also largely financed from voluntary funds and staffed overwhelmingly by the donors. All the important staff positions in OCHRCare held by persons from western countries.  They make up half the cadre in the OHCHR.  The west influences the Office through them. USA, particularly,  has invested heavily in the OCHRC and the Office has become a ‘weapon’  of the US, observed Tamara Kunanayagam.

 OHCHR that has come in for heavy criticism by the UN Human Rights Council itself. The UNHRC passes every year (with more than a two thirds majority) a resolution calling upon the OHCHR to end the domination of that office by Westerners and to reduce its dependency on Western funds.

Countries have objected to the imbalanced representation in the HRC and OHCHR. Sri Lanka ‘s Ambassador in Geneva, Tamara Kunanayakam had in 2012 pointed out that 80% of the UNHRC’s funding requirements are supplied by powerful nations such as the United States and its allies. Also, key positions in the UNHCR are mostly held by those who have served in the foreign services of such countries. The government has thus agreed to place Sri Lanka under the supervision of an institution that is facing criticism by the UNHRC itself for its Western bias.

Sri Lanka’s position is that this fact is significantly detrimental to the impartiality of the UNHRC activities, especially when dealing with the developing world. As a result, Sri Lanka, along with Cuba and Pakistan, successfully sponsored a resolution seeking transparency in funding and staffing the UNHRC, during its 2012 session.

HRC is no longer an exercise in human rights, it is an exercise in geopolitics and superpower politics, said Rohan Gunaratne. Human rights are used by politically and economically powerful countries to target selected countries, said Pathfinder Foundation. The HRC has always directed its spotlight on countries based on its politics, observed Palitha Kohona. The west is using a phony Human Rights campaign over Sri Lanka, said Kamal Wickremasinghe.

Sri Lanka’s Pathfinder Foundation observed that the developed countries in the west and the oil rich Gulf countries are rarely, if ever, summoned before HRC. The sole exception to this is Israel. HRC has passed many resolutions against Israel, to the fury of Israel. In 2017, HRC adopted 5 such resolution in one session despite opposition from US and UK.

The resolutions brought by the west mainly target developing countries, particularly those in Asia and Africa. The west   decides which country should be hauled before it and who should undertake the task, said Pathfinder. Sri Lanka was handled by Canada in the 1980s and by USA and UK today. Certain third world countries have grouped together to counter this. It was this group that supported Sri Lanka during the special session in May 2009, said Pathfinder.

There is horse trading of votes at the UN, observed Guardian. One country will pledge to vote for a motion here in exchange for a vote to be on a committee there. There is arm twisting too. The weaker nations are made to vote against their conscience. In the case of Sri Lanka, US got reluctant countries to at least abstain. The countries that refrained from voting made speeches in Sri Lanka’s favor and then refrained from voting, which was their way of indicating that they were refraining from voting only under duress, reported the media.

There is a clear polarization of countries in the HRC.  In 2016, some member countries of the HRC objected to China, Russia, Cuba and Saudi Arabia holding seats in the HRC. ‘Too many repressive regimes have found a place on the United Nations Human Rights Council, We must vote in countries  that they have good human rights records’, said UK sanctimoniously.

At the plenary session of the HRC in 2016, an NGO called UN Watch protested about the inclusion of China, Russia and Cuba in the Council.  Cuba promptly brought in a point of order. An NGO has no right to adversely comment on the composition of the HRC, said Cuba.  Cuba will obstruct if the NGO tries to do so again. China, Russia, Pakistan, Venezuela, agreed with Cuba that they had every right to sit on the HRC. USA, UK, Netherlands and Canada disagreed. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAOAEsI8HdA)

 Unlike Sri Lanka, Cuba fearlessly opposes USA at the HRC. Here is Cuba at the HRC session of 2012. ‘Nothing could better expose the utter hypocrisy of Washington’s “human rights policy” than the anti-Cuba vote at the UNHRC,’ said Cub in 2012. ‘This year, Washington pressured Honduras to “sponsor” the US-authored resolution against Cuba, Honduras had death squads. Even the most vitriolic critics cannot claim a shred of evidence that any death squads exist in Cuba. 

‘US arm-twisted dependent countries in Latin America to support the anti-Cuba vote. Among those voting for the resolution were the governments of countries with some of the most atrocious records of military and death-squad repression.  Cuba, with a very low infant mortality rate of six per 1,000 live births, universal and free health care, no homelessness, is condemned.  But no resolution is passed against the United States for killing thousands of Iraqi people and illegally occupying the country, concluded Cuba.

Cuba took a firm anti US stand where ever possible, and extended this to Israel as well. At the UNESCO World Heritage Committee 41st Session Krakow, Poland July 4, 2017, Israel called for a moment of silence for the Jews killed in World War II. The members took their time in standing up for this. Cuba then took the floor. Cuba pointed out that only the Chair can ask people to stand and then requested the assembly to stand for the Palestinians killed by Israel. Members stood up very quickly and also applauded.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO1GqRLWv0Q)

The Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has the power to intervene in human rights issues of countries. However,  OHCHR is not considered impartial in carrying out its role. The role played by the OHCHR, in manipulating human rights has been a subject of discussion for some time, said Pathfinder Foundation. The credibility, independence and impartiality of the HRC have come into question wherever they are or have been, including in our own region,    observed Tamara Kunanayagam. Nepal asked OHCHR to leave Nepal in 2012.

In 2009,Algeria criticized   the Commissioner’s   report on civilians and armed conflict. Navaneethan Pillay had lumped together various conflicts around the world where circumstances differed and used a one size fits all approach.  Algeria said it was time to work out the exact relationship between the HRC and the UN Human rights Commissioner. The Commissioner said at the opening of the 32nd session of HRC in 2013 that a growing number of countries are refusing to cooperate with them, but that this will not deter the UNHRC.

Sri Lanka found, first of all, that the UN, of which it is  a member , was supporting Tamil separatism. In 2005,   Kofi Annan, as UN Secretary General had sent a condolence message on the death LTTE eastern province political wing leader Kaushalyan. National Bhikkku Front took to the streets in protest in Colombo and marched to UN head office saying this gesture  had given diplomatic status to a terrorist outfit.  Diplomatic circles had commented on the clandestine links top UN envoys maintained with the LTTE . For instance, V. Nambiar, Under-Secretary-General had phoned KP” in Malaysia. He had been in touch with the LTTE for some time, said the media in 2009.

Resolutions against Sri Lanka are not a new phenomenon at the HRC said Pathfinder. Way back in 1987, while the armed conflict against the LTTE was at its infancy, Sri Lanka had to face a hostile resolution in the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), the forerunner to HRC. On that occasion, the initiative to take Sri Lanka before the CHR was made by Argentina at the bidding of India. Sri Lanka  had voted in favor of the UK in the United Nations General Assembly on the Falklands issue and Argentina was angry. Sri Lankan delegation spearheaded by late H.W. Jayewardene and Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala succeeded in amending the resolution and allowed it to be adopted.

Sri Lanka found that  that the Commissioner herself, was against Sri Lanka . Naveneethan Pillay, a South African of Indian Tamil origin  and UN Commissioner for Human Rights  2008-2014, has spoken against Sri Lanka on many occasions. She said that the government of Sri Lanka had  perpetrated  atrocities in the Eelam war  ‘under the guise of fighting terrorism’.

In 2009 after the   anti Sri Lanka  Resolution  has been rejected, she had  called for an independent inquiry into Sri Lanka.  The Algerian envoy reminded her that the Council had already overwhelmingly rejected the  call for such an inquiry and nobody had the right to challenge the Council on this score. Navaneethan Pillay had ignored the 700 mosque attacks in Britain but emphasized the 22 mosque attacks  in three years in Sri Lanka, said Shenali Waduge. Wikipedia entry on HRC makes special mention of Sri Lanka as a problem human rights case.

Starting with 2006, UN dispatched several high ranking officers on fact finding missions. P. Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions and Alan Rock ,special representative of the UN for children in armed conflict  came in  2006. John Holmes, UN under secretary  for humanitarian affairs, Louse Arbour UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Manfred Nowak, the U.N. Special Rapporteur against torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment came in 2007. Rita Izsak-Ndiaye, Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues  came in 2016. Pablo de Greiff, Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, and Ben Emmerson, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism,  visited in 2017.

Sri Lanka has been highly critical of these HRC  experts. These experts arrive with fixed ideas  on  Tamil Separatism and they produce  biased report based on limited surveys of doubtful validity, observed G.H.Peiris. They  had contact with the LTTE.  Rock had participated in LTTE festivities in Canada.  Louise Arbour met the Bishop of Jaffna and members of civil society in Jaffna. At her request, several such meetings in Colombo as well as Jaffna were without the presence of Government or security officials, enabling her to interact freely.

Whenever HRC experts are sent in to review Sri Lanka, the Sri Lanka media and analysts demolish their statements while the Tamil Separatist Movement   praises them. Here is   recent example.

 Ben Emmerson, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism”  visited Sri Lanka  in July 2017. He  was  openly critical and also threatening.  He said that work on the 2015 Resolution  seems to ground to a halt. That there was little evidence that perpetrators of war crimes were being brought to justice.

If Sri Lanka  failed to meet HRC commitments, the international community could use a range of measures increasing in severity,  against Sri Lanka .”there comes a point where patience runs out, he said. The media criticized Emmerson heavily, giving much publicity to his statements . Wijedasa Rajapaksa, then a Cabinet Minister  had  openly disagreed with Emmerson.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Rita Izsak-Ndiaye  visited in 2016. She said ‘Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian leadership’ as the main reason behind minority grievances and Sri Lanka’s ‘long civil war’. She also thought that keeping Article 9 of the Sri Lankan Constitution which refers to the primacy of Buddhism, ‘could lead to further suppression of and discrimination against minority religions and communities’.

She brought strong charges against the Buddhist majority for construction of Buddhist places of worship ‘in areas that were traditionally non-Buddhist’. It blames ‘Buddhist extremists’ for inciting ‘violence and hatred against religious and other minorities while proclaiming the racial superiority of Sinhala Buddhists’. The widespread destruction of Buddhist places of worship in the island’s north and the east and incidences of aggression, extremism and violence by members of other religious groups towards the Buddhists, however, are not mentioned in the Rapporteur’s Statement, observed Asoka Bandarage.

The OCHRC  has not finished with Sri Lanka, yet.  Louise Arbour, in  2007, wanted to establish  a UN mission to monitor human rights in Sri Lanka.  This was criticized as a ‘diabolical plan’. The government refused to consider it. It emphatically ruled out the possibility of establishing a UN country office and setting up a field mission in Sri Lanka. The idea of an office in Sri Lanka  is back again, though. It is  included in the 2015 HRC Resolution on Sri Lanka .

The 2015  resolution also allows for the establishment of a permanent Western presence in the form of an OHCHR field office in Sri Lanka, which will have the combined function of investigation, monitoring, and governance, warned  Kunanayagam. The field Office will not only assist in obtaining the required material, financial and technical support for implementation of the numerous recommendations, but will also monitor, assess and verify the implementation of the 2015 Resolution, going beyond its General Assembly mandate.

OHCHR field offices are fully funded by the rich Western countries, and that most of the staff are directly or indirectly linked to the donors, continued Kunanayagam. The offices are frequently utilized for destabilization purposes and to gain a foothold in countries where a direct Western presence proves politically difficult. Their credibility, independence and impartiality have come into question wherever they are or have been, including in our own region,where recently the Government of Nepal asked OHCHR to leave the country. There is no doubt that, through the OHCHR field office, Washington and London will take over the entire process in Sri Lanka and, for all practical purposes, the office will become the Trojan Horse that will permit direct US intervention in Sri Lanka, concluded Kunanayagam.

The HRC does not hide its bias towrds Tamil Seperatist Movement.  UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention which arrived in December 2017   had inspected 30 detention centers and interviews with more than 100 imprisoned persons.  They travelled to Colombo, Negombo, Anuradhapura, Vavuniya, Trincomalee and Polonnaruwa.   But they were not prepared to visit Commodore D.K.P Dassanayake, held in remand at Welikada, without bail, for six months. ‘He is also an arbitrary detainee, said Dassanayake’s daughter Manjari.  This group came to Sri Lanka to investigate arbitrary detainees. They interviewed LTTE people, but not war heroes.

TV news showed one of the Group refusing to accept Manjari’s petition. The others had said they would not come out of the Conference Room till Manjari left. Commodore Dassanayake’s wife said she had to hand over her letter to UN Resident Representative as UN staff refused  to  let her hand it over directly to leader of the Working Group.’ The UN staff had wanted to know, first of all,   whether I represented a missing LTTE cadre.’

However, Chandraprema observed that when   Commissioner Zeid Al Hussein presented his report to UNHCR in September 2015, in Geneva, he was aggressive, judgmental and arrogant but   when he visited Sri Lanka in Feb 2016 he took ‘a humble and flexible position.’  He made a ‘tail between the legs speech’ and left. Probably beucase he saw that public opinion was against yahapalana government.

Additions to essay.

i. The report of the Office of the Commisioner of Human Rights, the OISL report has been questioned on procedure. The correct procedure is for the HCR to appoint a three member commission after the resolution is passed in HCR but here the investigation was done by the OHCR itself.

ii. The conduct of  the UNHRC which includes sponsoring palpably false reports and threatening small/defenceless countries to please certain powerful countries, whilst turning a blind eye to their abuses, stands in stark contrast to that of a major UN specialized agency, the International Labour Organization [the ILO, founded in 1919]. Its impeccable Constitution ensures its governance through its tripartite structure of governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations, all of which are represented on its Governing Body and participate in its decision-making processes. This makes it impossible for a few powerful governments to control its agenda. It has passed 189 Conventions – more than any other body. ILO Conventions become a part of national law not on ratification by States, but by incorporation of their provisions in their national laws. Unlike individuals in some UN agencies, ILO officials treat members with the utmost respect and in a civilized manner – a culture alien to many of these human rights specialists. ( continued)

SUSANTHA WIJESINGHE. A MELVIN JONES FELLOW.

The first question would be, not of the severe punishment that the ERRANT DRIVER has to face, but that of the Safety of Lives of the Pedestrians, that constantly walk on the road.

It was only last year that I wrote on the same subject, to the TWO Mahanayakas, to speak to the President,  hoping that they would care for the lives on the road. NO, they just ignored my plea, and probably threw my long letter to the waste bin, along with some Banana Skins awaiting disposal.  All Public Servants responsible for maintaining Road Vehicular Discipline, and Pedestrian Discipline, particularly the POLICE DEPARTMENT, whom I think should handle the Subject , be the initiators of this VAST PROJECT, <b>PLEASE LEND ME THY EAR.<b>

I suggest that SPEED BUMPS be introduced, about 30 feet away, on either side of the Pedestrian crossings, so as to enforce  ALL VEHICLES to come to almost  ‘ stopping speed ‘ without continuing at the speed they are travelling  over the Pedestrian Crossing. This will totally prevent the scenario we saw, THE BUS HITTING THE TWO SCHOOL GIRLS, RIGHT ON THE PEDESTRIAN CROSSING. Next Question ? How to meet the Expenditure for two SPEED BUMPS, at a  Pedestrian Crossing. I suggest that the PRIME MINISTERS OFFICE,  seek an Estimate for the Cost of the Two Speed Bumps from the RDA, The Road Development Authority. Here is a PRACTICAL SUGGESTION.:-The RDA can be asked to construct Two Speed Bumps at a Pedestrian Crossing.  They can evaluate the Cost, plus a 15% profit added onto cost, because it is my point of view, that the RDA should get the entire All Island Contract for installing Speed Bumps, as the moment the private contractors  are on the radar to put their hand into it, THE BRIBE TAKERS WILL MAKE IT A CIRCUS.

Let us say, hypothetically, the RDA estimate that a  Speed Bump  would cost Rs 10,000, and Two will cost Rs.20,000, per Pedestrian Crossing.   The Police Department, should seek free publicity from Media personnel to collect Rs. 20,000 for each proposed set of Speed Bumps. I also believe that The Lions Clubs could assist. Lot more to be thought of and said.

IT IS THE PRIME MINISTER WHO SHOULD GIVE A KICK START TO THIS PROJECT.  <b>Can anyone bring this project to the notice of the PRIME MINISTER.  Blessings of the Noble Triple Gem for the Projects success.

SUSANTHA WIJESINGHE.

A MELVIN JONES FELLOW.

 

Kanthar Balanathan

DipEE(UK), GradCert(Rel Eng-Monash), DipBus&Adm(Finance-Massey), CEng., MIEE

Fundamental

SriLanka received independence on the 4^th February 1948. The country was still under the British throne up to the 22^nd May 1972, when the country achieved full independence. However, we still celebrate the 4^th of February as the day of independence. SL spends millions of dollars all over the world to celebrate 4^th February as the Independence Day. However, GOSL does not believe when the country received full sovereignty. This has been a fundamental flaw of our people and the politicians. Let’s see how Britannica defines Sovereignty: Quote; –

Sovereignty, in political theory, the ultimate overseer, or authority, in the decision-making process of the state and in the maintenance of order”.

To quote the compromising state of sovereignty: Ref https://www.lawnet.gov.lk/1977/12/31/c-kodeeswaran-appellant-and-the-attorney-general-respondent/

In 1969, Kodeeswaran appealed to the Privy Council and won the case. This is a simple example of the absence of autonomy and authority of the SL state.

The question is: Are we still a sovereign state, making our own decisions?

Voters elect a wider cross-section of the candidates with lack or no education. Most SriLankan see attorneys are the best choice for governance. Attorneys have a tapered understanding and vision of economics, technology, and social sciences. In the North and Eastern sector, it’s worse. People have a mindset that only Attorneys can be politicians. Since the 4^th February 1948, Tamil politicians have made the N&E, a racial, xenophobic, infantile, immature province. Who are these politicians? Mostly or all of them are Attorneys from the Tamil sector. Remember, we are in the 21^st century with popular multi-skilling functions.

The only ideology for these Law qualified politicians is to propagate Tamil Eelam racial slogan along with the caste oppressive motto. They were not interested in developing the North or East. They knew that propagating the Tamil Eelam and the caste differential equation will keep them in politics. In the recent times, the Tamil politicians are said to be following Tamil Nadu politics.

In the Southern sector, people’s mindset was that only naiks, wardenes, and Singhes, with the exception of Premadasa and Sirisena, are fit to govern.

1. G. Ponnambalam (GGP) created the chaos by demanding 50/50, with lack of perception of how he will apportion the balance 50% between, Tamils, Burgers, and Muslims. SJVC started his motto of Federalism. At Least GGP was responsible for the Cement, Chemical, and Paper mill in the North and the East. That was all. The rest of the period our famous Tamil politicians were claiming for Federalism and Separatism, to hold onto power. That is the only manifesto that will keep them elected. The big question is: What have they done to the region? Any development?

It is the fault of the imbecilic people who voted for them. Finally, every SriLankan should accept that most of the people who vote in the N&E are half-baked illiterates and imbecile.

How about now? With the NPC created, stooges elected, and with former CJ in the chair. What have they done? Any development? Now their dreams and roar are for police and land power. Apart from enjoying their three courses of meals per day, free travel, etc., what has the Chief Minister done so far? CVW would dare to know where Amban, Sangarathai is. It is of the opinion that CVW should retire and go into age care than in politics, as he is one who is messing up with his two fingers shown vertically up in the air most of the times calling for either Federalism or Tamilealam.

Every self-centered selfish Tamil politician has a deep-rooted gluttony of being elected and their kith and kin being in politics. One Tamil politician was quite adamant demanding a Minister post for his brother within NPC. Do these politicians come to serve the people in their electorate or look after their kith and kin? Once elected there objective and mission is to earn and collect adequate funds for the next election. Current financial politics is their political parties have branches opened in foreign countries for fund buildups.

Government allocates funds to each of the MPs to be spent in their electorates. Where does the money go? If so, has any NPC Councilor spent any money on development to the people of Araly North & Kulani? With an exception of NPC Councilor Sinnathurai Thavarajah.

Let’s consider each of the Tamil political party:

1. TNA- Tamilealam National Army in the name of Tamil National Alliance, fooling people. Most in the Tamil populace do not understand TNA’s deceitfulness and unscrupulousness. What has Sambanthar achieved as a Leader of Opposition, apart him having the Luxury of Cars, house, servants, expensive three-course meals a day? Once a while he gets up from sleep and shouts HR violation, war crimes, missing persons etc. Its recommended that the elderly politicians retire and hand over to politicians with expertise like MA Sumanthiran etc.
2. The wife of a former terrorist Ananthi is now silent after overloading her with a complicated portfolio which confused her and does not understand what her responsibilities are.
3. Some politicians in the PLOTE sector are like Mr. Bean, the comedian, and characteristics like a crane. (ஓடு மீன் ஓட உறுமீன் வருமளவும்வாடி இருக்குமாம் கொக்கு. Meaning a crane waiting all full day to peck on the right fish). They reveal a weak muscle in politics with lack of understanding in political science. Their families, may be, from elite group, based on caste status pushed them into politics. Suddenly people appeared to be the PLOTE politicians, demanding for three sabas. The military have found weapons belonging to the house of PLOTE. Ref; http://www.jvpnews.com/srilanka/04/154120
4. EPRLF is considered the confused party, with an ulterior motive to be holding portfolios and fund collection. EPRLF has two factions. Both are extreme terrorist fronts in the past, who committed murders.
5. TELO is another terrorist front imitating to be on the democratic front.
6. TULF is another group with an old leader struggling to come to the front, however, they can never come up.
7. Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam is a character who has a law degree, however, we can ask a question: What have you offered to the people in the N&E. With due respect, GGP, have you any knowledge of social sciences, history, and economics, apart from owning a multi-million-dollar business? What is the answer to a question put forward by people? What is the root cause of the Tamil problem?

On the whole, if we analyze, most or all of the Tamil political parties are former terrorist fronts pretending to be democratic leaders. Can we believe them? NO. All still propagate separatism.

Current politics in the North and East is demanding seats for the individual arms of the TNA. A discarded party called TULF is trying to emerge into politics. However, from past knowledge and experience of the TULF and the leader, people do not recognize them as a viable political party. Formation of new Congress, Council, Alliance etc. is the trend in Tamil Politics. It reflects the intelligence of the people who portray their political inability.

Government servants and employees have a ceiling on their working life. They can go on extension till they are 60 years. However, the government regulation does not place a ceiling for politicians. In the 21^st century, dementia is more common over the age of 65, but it can also affect younger people. The illness can begin when people are in their 40s or 50s. However, SriLanka allows politicians over the age of 65 to enter politics. This may pose a threat to the citizens and economy of the country. Any new entrant to the public service has to undergo a medical examination. What about the politicians? Does the government feel that any politician is fit to enter politics? Do not they need a medical examination?  Some of the candidates are mentally unstable and may not be fit. Should be the government proscribe for medical examination of political candidates, especially for mental stability.

Recently one candidate assaulted another candidate in Jaffna.

It is recommended that government bring in the ceiling on age for politicians. The 21^st century has generated people with Neurodegenerative disorders. This causes problems with how people move, feel, behave or think. Sickness like Alzheimer’s disease – a form of dementia, Motor neuron disease, and Huntington’s disease. Recent information is that MPs go for medical treatment overseas spending public funds. Hence retired MPs could go into an aged care rather going to parliament. Their pension could be supplemented with additional funds for them to go into aged care after 65. That will save the country’s economic status, social condition, technology etc. from these politicians.

The politicians are polluting the minds of the youngsters and congenitally imbecilic people to fight for separatism. They do not preach economics, development, technological advancement, sole trading technical business (microenterprises) etc.

The recent trend is warfare with swords. This project the mental state of youngsters in the North. Talking to any Tamil, they reply that it is the Army that is organizing the sword gang in the North. That’s the biggest foolish statement of those Tamils. Knowing the North for practicing terrorism, theft, smuggling and killing in the past for 39 years, the trend for Tamil youth for easy fund generation is organizing a sword gang. Why are the Tamil politicians silent on this? Has CVW made any statement?

We Tamils do not believe in interaction, diplomacy, and negotiation, but only embrace violence & physical fights. All Tamil political parties have a deep-rooted racism and xenophobic belief in their mind.

Vellupillai Prabhakaran is the symbol of violence, racism, and terrorism.

It could be said that Sinnadurai Thavarajah Hon Leader of Opposition (LOP), Douglas Devananda and some youth are helping the people in the North. Hon LOP-NPC is seen to be engaged with a significant amount of help to the people in need. Who is the NPC councilor for Araly North and Kulani? What has the person done so far?

SriLanka is a small country with limited resources and struggling to survive with massive corruption at every level. SriLanka, economically cannot be a Federal State or Two States. It is one Nation, One State and all are Sri Lankans.

It seems the Frogs are unable to come out of the well with old maniacs in politics”.

December 2017

කැලුම් ජයසුමන

ජනතා විමුක්ති පෙරමුණ ආරම්භයේ සිටම පහළ මධ්‍යම පන්තියත්, කුල පිඩිතයනුත්, විශ්වවිද්‍යාල ප්‍රජාවත් අකර්ශනිය වූ පක්ෂයකි . යමක් තේරුම් බේරුම් කරගත හැකි සහ අනෙකාගේ දුක දැනෙන රට පිලිබඳ හැගීමක් සහිත මිනිසුන් ඒකරාශිවී ආරම්භවූ දේශපාලන ව්‍යපාරයක් වුවද නායකත්වය සහ ආරම්භක සාමාජිකත්වය මාක්ස්වාදී විය. 

එනමුත් මාක්ස්වාදයේ එන සමහර කොටස් වෙනස් කරමින් රටට ගැලපෙන ලෙස සකස් කිරීම රෝහණ විජේවීරයන් විසින් කරන ලදී. අඩු පාඩු මතු උවද නිර්ධන පංති වියාපාරය තුළ දැඩි විශ්වාසයක් ගොඩ නැගීමට එදා විජේවීරයන් සමත් විය.

ආරම්භ වී සුළු කලකින්ම සන්නද්ධ අරගලයකට බට ජවිපෙ කියුබානු පන්තියේ ජයග්‍රහණයක් ප්‍රර්ථනා කරන්නට වි නුමුදු ජයග්‍රහණය කෙසේ වෙතත් ජිවිත දහස් ගණනක් බිලිදී අරගලය අවසන් විය.
නැවත සංවිධානය වන ජවීපෙ 1983 පක්ෂ තහනමට ලක්වන විට ජනාධිපතිවරණයට පෙනී සිටිමින් රෝහණ විජේවීර ප්‍රජාත්‍රන්තවාදී ප්‍රවාහයට එක්වී සිටියේය. පක්ෂ තහනමෙන් අනතුරුව නැවත කෑලෑ වදින ජවිපෙ 1989 රෝහණ විජේවීර ඝාතනය වනතෙක් රහසිගත සංවිධානයක් ලෙසම පැවතිය.

ඉන්පසු නැවත 1993 සිට සංවිධානය වන ජවිපෙ තෝරා ගන්නා මාවත වන්නේ ජාතික විමුක්ති අරගලය ජයග්‍රහණය තුලින් සමාජ වාදයකි. එය ඉතාමත් කෙටි කලකින් ජනතා ආකර්ශනය දිනාගන්නා ස්වභාවයක් පිළිබිඹු විය.

1994 වසරේ එක් ජනතා නියෝජිතයෙක් තෝරා දෙන ජනතාව පිළිවෙලින් 2000 දස දෙනෙකුද 2001 වසරේ 16 දෙනෙකුද 2004 වසරේ 41 දෙනෙකු වශයෙන් ජනතා ප්‍රසාදයට ලක් වන්නේය.

එසේ වේගයෙන් ඉදිරියට එන පක්ෂයේ ගමන පිළිබඳව රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ පවසන්නේ අපට ඊළඟ තරගය ඇත්තේ ජනතා විමුක්ති පෙරමුණ සමඟ බවකි.

2005 ජනාධිපතිවරණයේදී මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂට සහය දෙන ජවිපෙ ඉන් අනතුරුව වමේ ව්‍යපාරයට ඉතා ලංවූ ශ්‍රී ල නි ප ය ප්‍රමුඛ වමේ සන්ධානයට පස්ස හරවා විපක්ෂයේ අසුන් ගත්තේය . පිරිහීම ආරම්භ වන්නේ ඉන් අනතුරුවය. රට පීලිබඳ වැඩි ලෙන්ගතු කමින් පැමිණි ජවිපෙ ඉන් අනතුරුව රටට ද්‍රෝහී පිලිවෙතට තල්ලු කරන ලද බලවේගය කුමක්ද?

අපගේ ප්‍රස්තුත කාරණාව ආරම්භ වන්නේ එතැනදීය . එදා ජවිපෙන් එලියට පැමිණි විමල් විරවංස කියූ ලෙසත් අද ජවිපෙ හිටපු නායක සෝමවංශ අමරසිංහ දැන් කියන ලෙසත් එම පිලිපැනීමේ නියමුවා අනුර දිසානායකයි.

පක්ෂයේ මධ්‍යම කාරක සභාව තුල එදා විමල්ට පහර දෙන සැණින් රවී කරුණානායක හරහා සිරස නාලිකාව දැනගත් ආකාරය අද හොදින් පැහැදිලියි .ආසන 41ක් ලබාදී ඊළඟ පිම්මට ජනතාව සූදානම් කරන ලද පක්ෂය අනුර දිසානායක විසින් ඉතා නින්දිත ලෙස පවා දෙනු ලැබිය . එනම් රනිල් විකමසිංහ විසින් එදා ප්‍රකාශකළ අනතුර පහ කර ගැනීම සඳහා අවශ්‍ය කටයුතු සකසන ලද බව මින් පැහැදිලිය. Cඓඇ සහ ර්‍ඇW ඔත්තුකරුවෙකු වූ අනුර දිසානායක ගේ භූමිකාවේ දිග පළල අද සිටින අයට අමුතුවෙන් කියා දිය යුතු නොවේ. මන්ද අසන 41 ලැබ ඉහල ස්ථානයක ජනතා ප්‍රසාදයක් දිනා සිටි ජවිපෙ අද අත් වී ඇති ඉරණම තුළින් මෙය විග්‍රහ කරගත හැක.
ජවිපෙ පදනම වී ඇත්තේ ශ්‍රී ල නි ප ප්‍රමුක වමේ සංදර්භය තුලය. එසේ නොවී අන්ත දක්‍ෂිනාකශික එජාප කදවුර තුල නොවේ. පක්ෂය රවටා රට රවටා හොර රහසේ අනුර දිසානායක ප්‍රමුඛ ද්‍රෝහී කල්ලිය ජවිපෙ අන්ත දක්ෂිණාංශික රනිල් වික්‍රරමසිංහගේ දෙපතුලට පක්ෂය දක්කාගෙන යන ලද්දේ ඉතාමත් නිර්ලජ්ජිත ආකාරයටය.

එම වසල ක්‍රියාව සාධාරණිකරණය කිරීම සඳහා පක්‍ෂ සමාජිකයන්ට දෙසා වදාරන්නේ ඒවා සියල්ල උපක්‍රම බවය. සෑම විටම එයට දෙන පිළිතුර වන්නේ ධනේශ්වර ක්‍රමයට අර්බුධයට යවා ජනතාව අන්ත අසරණ කළ විට සියළු ජනයෝ අපත් පසු පස එනවා කියාය.
නමුත් සත්‍ය නම් ධනපති පන්තියේ ඔඩොක්කු කුක්කෙකු වූ අනුර දිසානායකත් ඔහුට බැලමෙහෙවර කරන ඊනිය විප්ලවවාදී නායක මහත්වරු කීපදෙනෙකු නැවත හැරීමට නොහැකි ලෙස උන්ගේ යටහත් සේවකයන් වී ඇති බවයි.

2005 මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ ජනාධිපතිවරණය ජය ගත් පසු යුද්ධය ආරම්භ කරන ලෙස පස්පඩංගුවේ මහින්දට බැන වැදුනු ජවිපෙ යුද්ධය ආරම්භකොට සාර්ථක වෙමින් තිබියදී ආණ්ඩුව පෙරලීම සඳහා අයවැය පැරදවිමට චන්දය පාවිචිචි කළ අයුරු මතකයට නැගුවෙනම් එදා ජාතික විමුක්ති අරගලය තුලින් සමාජවාදය කියූ ජවිපෙ වැටි ඇති ඉරණම තේරුම් ගැනීමට අපහසු නොවේ.

ජාතිකවාදී පිලේ සිටි විමල් වීරවංස ඇතුළු කණඩායම පක්ෂය හැරයාමත් සමඟම ද්‍රෝහී අනුර කුමාර දිසානායකගේ පිලි ශක්තිමත් විය. උපතින්ම අමු කුහකයෙකු වූ ටිල්වින් විරවංස භීතිකාවෙන් පෙලීම නිසාම අනුරට සහය දක්වන්නට විය එදා මේවාට විරුද්ධව උවද ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදය ඕනාවට වඩා දීම හා පක්ශය තුල නායකත්වයේ බල වපසරිය පාවිච්චි නොකල සෝමවංශට පක්ෂය මෙහෙය විය නොහැකි විය . රටින් පිට සිටියදී කළ දේ රට තුලට පැමිණි විට කල නොහැකි විය. ඔහුගේ දියාරු ස්වභාවය නිසා ද්‍රෝහී අනුර දිසානායක ඔහුගේ පාවාදීම ජයටම කරගන යාමට හැකිවිය . ප්‍රතිපලය වුයේ කුමක්ද? ඇමෙරිකාව ප්‍රමුඛ විජාතික පරයන්ගේ උවමනාව වූ මහින්ද පැරදවීම සඳහා 2010 සරත් ෆොන්සේකා පිල්ලියට කඩේ යාමට අනුර දිසානායක පක්ෂය මෙහෙය විය. 
යුද්ධය දිනා දුන් නායකයාට එදා එරෙහි වූ අනුර දිසානායක ද්‍රෝහීයා 2015 දී එරෙහි වීම අරුමයක්ද?

රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහගේ තාලයට පාද තබන නිසාම කට වාචාල ද්‍රෝහී අනුර දිසානායක පරණ තැටියටම වාදනය කරමින් පක්ෂයේ සාමාජිකත්වය රවටන්නේය. එළුවාගේ ලබ්බ වැටෙනා තෙක් ගමන් කල නරි ලෙස පක්ෂ සමාජිකත්වයද වසර 50 කට අසන්න කාලයක් කට ඇරගෙන පස්සෙන් යන්නේ ස්වර්ගය පහල වන තෙක්ය.

විශ්ව විද්‍යාලයේ තරුණයන්ට දෙසන්නේ උපාධිය අරගෙන කුමටද? අපගේ පාලනයකදී ඔය ධනපති අධ්‍යාපනය අවශ්‍ය නොවනා බවත් මුළු කාලයම කැප කොට සමාජවාදය දිනා ගන්නට කටයුතු කරනා ලෙසත්ය. ඒ ඒ පසු පස ගොස් ජීවිතය කාලකන්නි කරගන්නා ලද පිරිස කොපමණද?

එසේ මුත් නායකයන්ගේ ළමා ළපටින්ට ඉතා හොඳ අධ්‍යාපනයක් DS , විශාකා ආදී පාසල් වල ලබාදෙන අතර පෙර සඳහන් කල සුත්‍රය ඒ අදාළ වන්නේ නැත. එය සෝමවංසගේ පුතාටද අදාල නැත. දැඩි හීනමානයකින් පෙලෙන අමු දුෂ්ටයෙකු වූ දිසානායක තෙමේ වෛරයෙන් හළ හල විෂ සහිතව දැන් පිස්සුවෙන් මෙන් කියවන්නේ හරියට අපි 2015 ජනවාරි 08 වෙනිදා ආණ්ඩු පෙරලා ජනපතිවරු ඉවත්කොට මජර ජනාධිපතිවරයෙක් අගමැතිවරයෙක් හා ආණ්ඩුවෙන් පත් කළ අයුරිනි.

මේ වන නැස්පත්තිය අප දන්නා සියළු ආකාර වලින් එදා කියද්දී අමු හෙළුවෙන් රනිල්ට කඩේ ගිය අනුර දිසානායක නම් නිචයා දැන් අපට කියන්නේ මේ සියළුම දෑ අප විසින් කරණ ලද වැරදි ආකාරයටය. ජනතාව රවටමින් ඉතා පහත් ආකාරයට හැසිරෙන මේ මිනිසා පෙනෙන්නට හදන්නේ මාක්ස්වාදී ඔස්තාර් කෙනෙක් ලෙසය.

එනමුත් අපට පෙනුනදේ එනම් මේ අවුල් හවුල රට වනසන බව අප කියද්දී අනුර දිසානායක ආණ්ඩු පෙරලා කැබිනට් මණ්ඩලයටත් උඩින් ජාතික විධායක සභාව අටවා එහි විධායක සභිකයෙකු ලෙස අසුන්ගන්නේය. මන්ත්‍රීවරුන්ට අචාර ධර්ම පද්ධතියක්ද හද්න්නේය. දැන් පාරට පැන මජර ආණ්ඩු යැයි කියමින් සිඟිති ආතල් දෙන්නේය. අනුර දිසානායක නම් කෂඩයා දේශපාලන වශයෙන් පාහරයෙකි. ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදී යහපාලනය හා එකී නොකී දෑ ගිරිය පලාගෙන කෑ ගැසූ ඔහුගේ සීතාම්බර පට සළුව තුලින් පෙනෙන්නේ අමු නිරුවතය . දැන් ද්‍රෝහී අනුර දිසානායක දේශපාලන නිගණ්ටයෙකි.

 

By Andre Vltchek Courtesy Information Clearing House“

From Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, Samarinda and Pontianak

December 18, 2017 “Information Clearing House” – Several years ago, a prominent Indonesian businessman who now resides in Canada, insisted on meeting me in a back room of one of Jakarta’s posh restaurants. An avid reader of mine, he ‘had something urgent to tell me’, after finding out that our paths were going to be crossing in this destroyed and hopelessly polluted Indonesian capital.

What he had to say was actually straight to the point and definitely worth sitting two hours in an epic traffic jam:

No one will be allowed to build comprehensive public transportation in Jakarta or in any other Indonesian city. If a mayor or a governor tries and defies the wishes of the ruthless business community which is in fact controlling most of the Indonesian government, he or she will be dethroned, or even totally destroyed.

These ‘prophetic’ words are still ringing in my ears, several months after the complete destruction of the progressive Jakarta governor, known as Ahok (real name: Basuki Tjahaja Purnama), who tried very hard to improve the seemingly ungovernable and thoroughly destroyed city, constructing new mass transit lines (LRT), restoring old train stations, cleaning canals, attempting to build at least some basic net of sidewalks, as well as planting trees and creating parks.

After Ahok’s first and extremely successful term in office, the opposition consolidated its forces. It consisted mainly of the Islamists, big business tycoons, and the military as well as other revanchist cadres (almost exclusively pro-business and pro-Western individuals) that are still controlling Indonesia.

‘Ahok’, an outsider and an ethnic Chinese, patently lost.

Instead of coming to his rescue, several ‘prominent’ but corrupt city planners and architects, most of them enjoying funding from abroad, shamelessly joined the bandwagon of ‘Ahok bashing’.

But even defeating Ahok was not enough. He had to be punished and humiliated, in order to discourage others from trying to replicate his socially-oriented example. Already during the election campaign, charges were brought against him, alleging that he had ‘insulted Islam’ during one of his public appearances.  It was total nonsense, disputed by several leading Indonesian linguists, but in a thoroughly corrupt society (both legally and morally) it simply worked.

On May 9, 2017, ‘Ahok’ was sentenced to two years in prison, and unceremoniously thrown into the dungeon.

Since then, many of his projects have stopped totally, or at least were significantly slowed down. A disgusting filth has once again began covering Jakarta’s canals and rivers.

For those who still believed in miracles, all hopes died.

Those ‘city planners’ who still conveniently believe that one can ‘work with’ the present regime (they call it ‘government’) correctly assumed that it was once again ‘business as usual’.

As ‘Ahok’ was being thrown behind bars, huge sighs of relief were almost detectable all over this misfortunate archipelago! Everything has returned to ‘normal’, at least for those who have been benefiting from the collapse of Indonesia and its cities.

The clock of Indonesian history was turned back. It is now almost certain that at least for several upcoming decades, all Indonesian cities will remain what they are now – a living hell, the worst nightmare, and indisputably some of the most horrid urban areas found anywhere on Earth.

But readers abroad are not supposed to know all this. Indonesian people are not supposed to understand the situation. It is now all biasa – ‘just normal, just fine. Everything is fine. Read those ANU (Australian National University) papers and you will learn that ‘Indonesia is now a normal country, like Brazil or Mexico’. Nothing extraordinary is taking place.

In reality, everything has collapsed. The cities have.

Not metaphorically, not hyperbolically, but concretely, practically.

A renowned Australian artist, George Burchett, who now resides in Hanoi, Vietnam, once visited Jakarta. For several weeks we travelled together all around the Indonesian archipelago. He was shocked and depressed. Before departing, he declared:

I saw many cities, all over the world. Cities are built for the people. For the first time in my life, in Indonesia, I saw the cities that are actually built not for the people, but against the people.

It is because Indonesian cities are fascist. They do not serve the needs of its citizens. On the contrary, they are designed to extract that little which is still left in the possession of the common Indonesian folks; extract and give it to the local rulers, as well as to the multi-national companies.

Excerpts of the most common definitions of ‘failed states’ are stated in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and can perfectly apply to both Indonesia in general, and to its cities in particular:

The governing capacity of a failed state is attenuated such that it is unable to fulfill the administrative and organizational tasks required to control people and resources and can provide only minimal public services… A failed state suffers from crumbling infrastructures, faltering utility supplies and educational and health facilities, and deteriorating basic human-development indicators…

Governor ‘Ahok’ tried to change the situation. Crowds cheered. Millions watched, in all the major cities of Indonesia. Hope was born, at first fragile but soon blossoming.

Then suddenly: a tremendous blast, full stop, and collapse! The man who dared to inject several socialist elements into the sclerotic, brutal system, ended up behind bars.

And it is now all back to the old ‘failed state’ scenario. Life is once again thoroughly empty and predictable.

There is hardly any difference between the Indonesian cities. If you put a person in the center or a suburb of Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, Semarang, Medan, Makassar or Pontianak, he or she would have no idea, which one is which.

All major streets are choked with traffic jams. There are no sidewalks, and even if there are some pathetic and narrow ones, they are overtaken by aggressive and smoke belching scooters, as well as by unregulated and unhygienic street vendor stalls. Thugs are everywhere, controlling the streets. Almost all side streets have open sewage system. When it rains, entire neighborhoods get submerged under filthy water. Tiny carts, pulled by unclean and underpaid men, collect garbage. All the cities face the same problems, and all the cities look precisely the same.

Sanitation, water quality and garbage recycling facilities are at similar levels to those of the poorest sub-Saharan African countries.

Slums are omnipresent – huge and brutal. In fact, most of the neighborhoods of the Indonesian cities, called kampungs (‘villages’), could easily fit the international definitions of slums.

A few years ago I was invited to speak at the University of Indonesia (UI). Various students asked me: Why? Why is all this is happening in our country? And is there any solution?”

I replied that, of course, there is a solution: socialism and central planning. But it would also have to be determined and real, and it would have to include a full-hearted anti-corruption battle, as well as a decisive ban on selling all natural resources and utilities to foreigners.” I added: And tell your professors to stop salivating over-funding from the West, and flying to Europe in order to learn about ‘administration’, ‘good governance’ and city planning from those who have been robbing your country for several centuries.”

I believe that students liked the sound of what I was saying (not sure they were still capable of understanding the meaning of my words). However, predictably, I was never invited to the UI again.

Indonesian cities are like open sores. Everything has been stolen from them and as a result, what makes life bearable is clearly missing. Only what the ‘elites’ do not want, is what has been left for the people.

There are hardly any public parks in Indonesia, at least no parks of any significance. Cities have no river or seafronts, in a striking contrast to South American, Middle Eastern and even African urban areas (not to speak of tremendous and beautiful public spaces, parks, promenades and exercise areas in China).

Dirty, clogged and polluted driveways are called ‘streets’ and ‘avenues’. There are no sidewalks, or if there are, they are just one meter wide, with broken tiles or deep potholes. Where sidewalks are not really needed, there may be actually some built – along one or two streets in the very center and in front of some government buildings, connecting basically nothing. This clearly shows that nothing is actually designed for the people.

It is important to understand that the government of Indonesia, on all levels, is not actually an institution that consists of men and women who are determined to improve the country and to serve its people. On the contrary!

In Indonesia, a great number of politicians belong to or are somehow affiliated to the military, which has ruled the country brutally since the 1965 Western-backed military coup. That coup destroyed everything socialist and Communist, banned Communist ideas, and murdered between 1 and 3 million people, including almost all the progressive intellectuals. On top of it, most of the politicians are businesspeople, tycoons and oligarchs, and the great majority of them of unsavory reputations. They have been robbing the nation and its people for more than half of a century, and there is absolutely no reason why they should stop doing it now, or anytime soon. For these individuals, to grab the top political positions is nothing more than about maximizing the profits.

‘Indonesian democracy’ which the West loves to glorify (no wonder, as Indonesia de-facto functions as an obedient colony, plundering its own citizens and resources on behalf of the West), consists of countless political parties, of which not one of them is from the left, or defends the interests of common people. Moreover, a great majority of the ‘civil society’, of the NGO’s, are subservient to Western economical and political interests. Many, if not all, of these organizations are directly funded from Washington, Berlin, London or Canberra. (I described the situation in my latest novel, Aurora.

Indonesian companies and its government are one single entity. And they are decisively and in unison plundering the entire archipelago of its natural resources. The 4th most populous country on Earth produces almost nothing. (Read my book Archipelago of Fear in English and in Bahasa Indonesia).

The ‘philosophy’ of this unbridled plunder is then applied to ‘urbanism’; to the way Indonesian cities are governed and basically abandoned to the markets. Not even in Africa where I lived and worked for several years, is there such absolute and shameless theft of urban land by the elites (of which members of government are part).

Once all this is determined, to understand the reality of Indonesia and its cities becomes much easier.

Once this is defined, Indonesian cities ‘begin to make sense’.

In reality, there is not much that could be called ‘urban’ in the Indonesian cities. Be it a city like Pontianak with 600,000 inhabitants, or Jakarta with 12 million (28 million including the surrounding cities and suburbs).

Wherever one goes, profit over people is taken to the extreme.

Like those logged out, mined out and polluted islands of the archipelago, Indonesian cities are designed in a way that brings maximum income to the extremely small group of individuals and businesses. The price has to be paid by the impoverished, often ill, badly-educated, and literally choking majority.

The tremendously low level of media outlets, education, pop entertainment, as well as constant religious encroachment and feudal family structures, are purposefully spread and upheld, so the population does not think, does not doubt and does not rebel.

The results are shocking.

Indonesian cities are like palm oil plantations or open-pit mines, with some elements of military barrack colonies (of course, there are some special quarters for the overseers, with large and kitschy houses, like those that dot South Jakarta).

Here, nothing is constructed to make life great, colorful, ecstatic, meaningful and happy. There are no permanent concert halls, no theatres, and no grand public museums (one that recently opened is private, and serves to further politically indoctrinate people, this time targeting the ‘urban middle class’). There are no pedestrian neighborhoods, and no free and public seafronts.

Not one architecturally valuable structure has been constructed in any Indonesian city after the 1965/66 military/religious coup.

In Indonesia, a ‘public area’ is synonymous with a mall, in fact, with countless malls of various sizes and qualities. Inside the malls, there are chain eateries and chain shops, as well as cafes. There are also a few cinemas, showing mostly Hollywood junk or local horror films. On the weekends, there are bands playing old Western and Indonesian pop tunes, offering absolutely no variety. Some 50 songs are recycled again and again. The most favorite is, predictably: I did it my way”.

There is nothing ‘extra’ in the Indonesian cities. Here everything is stripped to absolute basics: you somehow survive on your meager salary (with prices, at least for the food and consumer goods being as high or higher than in Tokyo or Paris), you somehow move to your workplace and back, sitting for hours every day in horrific traffic jams as there is no public transportation even in such cities with 2-3 million inhabitants, like Surabaya or Bandung. You cook and wash your dishes and clothes in terribly polluted water, and try to save on outrageously high electricity bills. There is absolutely nothing to do in your neighborhood. There is, of course, always a mosque nearby or sometimes a church, if that’s what you fancy. There are no parks, no playgrounds for children. There is no sidewalk to walk to a cafe, and so, if you want to actually go to a cafe or to a bookstore (all the bookstores in Indonesia are increasingly poorly stocked and heavily censored), you have to jump onto your scooter or into your car again, if you have any strength left.

The chances are – you have no time for anything, anyway. A 3-4 hours long daily commute, your exhausting work, and all you have time for is to collapse in front of the television set and get indoctrinated, neutralized and idiotized even further.

You learn to smile when you actually want to die, or at least to shout. You sense that nothing could ever change for better, and that your life is finished, perhaps at 25, or even earlier.

Eventually, some people do it sooner than others: you become religious, and you become traditional, conservative and ‘family-oriented’. There is nothing else, really. The cities of Indonesia will make sure that there is nothing else. They are the perfect machines, manufacturing obedience, extracting everything from human beings, and giving nothing in return.

I often describe the coup of 1965 as a Cultural Hiroshima”. While in Japan, the US openly experimented on the health of millions of human beings, in Indonesia the experiment was of a totally different nature. The area of interest to the Empire was:

What would happen with a progressive anti-imperialist nation that counts on a complex and diverse culture, if it is bathed in blood, if its theatres and film studios are shut down, 40% of teachers get murdered, women from left-wing organizations get their breasts amputated, writers are locked in Buru Island concentration camp, and urban planners are thought to design cities like Houston, Dallas or LA, but in a country with salaries that are 10% or less than those of the U.S.A.?

The answer is simple: It would turn into Indonesia. It would become Jakarta, as it is now”. For the Western demagogues and the imperialist planners, Indonesia” and Jakarta” are not only the names of the country and the city: they are names of the concept, of a model.

This model, forced on the colonies, is perfect for the West and its interests.

It is also perfect for the Indonesian ‘elites’, who are often getting dirty at home, plundering all they can, but do relax and play and often evacuate their entire families to Singapore, California, Australia, Hong Kong and many other ‘safe and clean’ places.

It is the cheapest; the most efficient of concepts designed to plunder, and to royally fuck a nation. Not surprisingly, the West has tried to replicate this ‘successful Indonesian model’ in many parts of the world.

It even tried to inject it into Russia, after the USSR was first mortally wounded and then destroyed. It tried to force it on Chile… My much older friends in Santiago told me that before the 9-11-1973 coup perpetrated by General Pinochet on behalf of the West and its companies, several people around President Allende were threatened by the right-wingers: Watch out, Jakarta is coming!”

Jakarta came! It is here, all over Indonesia, in all of its cities, and to varying degrees in most of the countries that have fallen under the Western neo-colonialist boot.

But what does it really mean, ‘Jakarta’? Is it just a name or is it also a verb, an infinitive? To Jakarta…”

It is ‘to take everything away from the people and to give nothing back’. ‘To Jakarta’ is to lie and to loot and to convince human beings, through long decades of indoctrination, that everything is just fine, and as should be. ‘To Jakartize’ the nation is to make almost the entire population irrelevant, to deliver the loot on the silver trays to both local and foreign rulers, leaving only dirty and polluted rivers and canals behind, as well as tremendous traffic jams, smog, bizarre overpasses with no escalators, and broken tiles along the driveways.

The ‘Jakartized population’ is obedient, explosively violent, edgy, but not towards the regime, turbo-capitalism, corrupt elites and their Western masters, but towards each other, as well as towards the minorities.

Jakarta gets very little criticism from the official mainstream Western and local media, and almost no genuine analysis from academia. No surprise: to attack the reality of the Indonesian cities is like attacking the entire Western neo-colonialist system imposed on various parts of the world. To tell the truth would destroy any journalistic career, as it would torpedo almost any chance for a well-remunerated university tenure!

Very often, all that one could expect in terms of a realistic description of the situation in Indonesia, are random exclamations overheard on board departing airplanes, or some ‘anecdotal evidence’ from the pages of travel magazines and blogs. It appears that what normal people see with their own eyes is in direct contradiction with what the mainstream media and academia presents as ‘facts’.

On 17 September 2017, a Malaysian newspaper The Star wrote:

Based on a real-time air quality index uploaded to the Airvisual application at midday on Friday, Sept 15, Jakarta ranked third as the most polluted city in the world… In mid-August, the application showed that Jakarta was at the top of the list, followed by Ankara, Turkey and Lahore, Pakistan.

Escape Here” magazine ranked Jakarta as the No1 city in its report The 10 Worst Traffic Cities in the World”:

It happens to be the country’s capital and one of the most poorly designed cities in the World, a combination that makes getting around here a disaster. An ever-increasing number of car owners that come from the expansion of suburbia that surrounds this mega-city are to be blamed for the 400 hours a year that citizens spend in traffic. It is actually hailed as being the worst traffic in the world. It doesn’t seem like there is any solution for this mega-city as the infrastructure here falls into the hands of the local government and contracts are renegotiated annually; which means long-term projects are pretty much impossible. An average trip in this city takes about 2 hours…

On 2 September 2015, even the official propaganda English language newspaper of Indonesia, the Jakarta Post, re-published the survey ranking the horrendous Indonesian capital as the 9th ‘un-friendliest city on Earth’:

Jakarta, the Indonesian capital notorious for gridlocks and bad air pollution, ranks 9th among the world’s least friendly cities this year, a recent survey by an international travel magazine shows. Readers of the highly regarded luxury travel magazine Conde Nast Traveler included Jakarta for the first time on its ’10 unfriendliest cities in the world’ list this year. In the survey, one of the readers said Jakarta was ‘the scariest place I have ever been to ‘with its congestion and aggressive locals.

The ‘scariest place’: but, of course! What could one expect from the capital city of the country that in the last half a century has committed 3 monstrous genocides (against its own population in 1965/66, against the people of East Timor and an on going genocide against the people of Papua)?

What could one expect from cities that have been totally robbed of green spaces and, in fact, of everything that could be called ‘public’, where the arts have disappeared and where absolutely everything has become commercialized; where everything and everybody is now expected to be the same – behave the same way, look the same way, sound the same way, taste the same way.

Try to look different, and if you are a Papuan, Chinese, African, or white, just try to walk on those broken tiny sidewalks of Surabaya, Jakarta, Pontianak, or Medan. You will be shouted at; you will immediately become the target of naked racism. People will stop and point fingers, or worse.

A few days ago I filmed from a boat sailing on a polluted river passing through Pontianak city, on an island in Borneo. Two children on the shore immediately raised their middle fingers and began yelling: Fuck you!” Just like that: with no warning and for no reason. And this is, of course, not the worst that could happen. If I was Chinese… were I an African… Everybody knows it. Nobody speaks about it, nobody writes…

According to Western ‘analysts’ and academics, Indonesia is a ‘democratic’ and ‘tolerant’ nation. The deeper it is sinking, the more oppressive and intolerant it becomes, the more devastated it gets, and the more it is glorified.

Lies are piled up on lies. The Emperor has beautiful clothes’, everybody shouts, as in that old children’s tale. But, in fact, he is naked!

It is clearly political correctness” at work. One is supposed to be ‘sensitive’ to the local ‘culture’, religion, and way of life. The only defect of this approach is that in countries such as Indonesia, the local culture, its way of life and even the extremely aggressive religions, are all the direct result of the fascist regime that was directly imposed onto this nation by the West after the 1965/66 slaughter.  Had the socialist pre-1965 course be allowed to naturally flow, Indonesia would now be a truly normal, socially-balanced, secular and tolerant nation, and its cities would serve the people, instead of the other way around.

Just a normal river in Jakarta

Here, the ‘political correctness’, is once again, protecting the crimes against humanity that have been committed by the West, by the local elites and the military, as well as by the religious leaders. The local ‘culture’ is not being protected at all, as it is actually dead, murdered.

The cities are dead as well. Their carcasses are stinking, horrifying, monstrous, stripped of all hope. People living in them are choking, humiliated, marginalized, unwell, and constantly robbed by the system.

Bizarrely, it takes an elitist magazine like Conde Nast to notice… It takes random travellers to speak out… One would never read such comments in the reports coming out of the Australian National University or on the pages of the New York Times.

 

Just outside the city of Surabaya, the second largest city in Indonesia, on the Island of Madura, several enormous ships are being manually cut into pieces and sold for scrap by destitute local people. Periodically things explode, collapse, and people lose their faces or limbs. It is a horrible sight: truly haunted, disturbing. Just like in Bangladesh, although here, it goes almost unnoticed.

In many ways, I believe that the Indonesian cities resemble those ships, and those polluted coastal areas where the ships are broken into thousands of parts and then sold. Once proud, they are now humiliated, in pain, being torn to pieces while still alive.

Only real fascism can treat its citizens this way; only a regime that has lost its marbles, and gone thoroughly insane.

Indonesia cities… What do they really consist of? Well, they are made of those tiny and crammed homes, filthy canals, potholed driveways, of indescribable pollution, of mosques and churches. Then there are a few office towers in their centers, countless shopping malls and several luxury hotels where the elites can escape and take some rest from the daily nightmare, which is ‘normal life’ here. Golf courses everywhere, but no decent public parks, as even those few green areas have been already thoroughly privatized.

Now the former governor of Jakarta, ‘Ahok’, is in jail for daring to change things; for building public transportation, cleaning the rivers and building a few tiny parks. He is in jail for relocating squatters to public housing, and for trying to serve the impoverished and humiliated majority.

His clearly socialist deeds were immediately smeared and discredited by the elites, by the Western-funded NGO’s and by corrupt city planners. Even when this could not stop his determination and zeal, religion was unleashed. Most of the religions are, after all, regressive, pro-business oriented, and ready to support any fascist regime.

How much deeper can Indonesian cities sink? When are they going to become uninhabitable?

People are already dying; thousands are, unnecessarily – from cancer, from stress, from respiratory diseases.

Millions of human beings are wasting their lives. They are alive, but it is only a bare existence, not really life: they are moving mechanically, cutting through the filthy air on their scooters, eating junk food, constantly surrounded by decay and ugliness.

Why?

For how much longer?

The forests of Borneo, Sumatra and Papua are burning. All over this archipelago, everything is logged out, consumed by mines, ruined by monstrous pollution. The extraction and looting of natural resources is the only real economic ‘engine’ of today’s Indonesia.

The cities are not faring much better. They are actually not faring any better at all.

It is time to wake up, or it could get too late. But the nation appears to be in a total slumber. It does not notice, anymore, that it is really in freefall. It was conditioned not to notice. It was made to accept, even to celebrate its own collapse.

Those who forced Indonesia into all this will not tell. As long as there is at least something left, something that can be extracted, utilized, looted, they will be cheering this great Indonesia’s ‘success’ and ‘progress’.

I encourage all those people from all over the world who would want to see the true face of neo-colonialism, of savage capitalism and right wing disaster, to come to the Indonesian cities! Come and see with your own eyes. Come and take a walk; don’t hide in your comfortable cities full of leafy parks, concert halls, art cinemas, public transportation and theatres.

This is real. This is a warning to the world!

Come and see how cities look like in a country where Communism and socialism are banned, where a colony does not even realize that it being colonized, and where everything is served on huge silver plates straight into the gullet of that monster called fascism.

Ketapang, West Borneo, Indonesia

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are his tribute to The Great October Socialist Revolution” a revolutionary novel Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DR Congo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

අද දෙරණ රාත්‍රී 06.55 ප්‍රධාන පුවත් විකාශය – 2017.12.19

KAMALIKA PIERIS

REVISED 19.12.17,   8.9.18,   29.3.19

The government of Sri Lanka defeated the LTTE in May 2009, and the Eelam War IV came to an end. Soon after, the separatist movement went into its next phase of attack, which was UN action against Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka was to be punished for defeating the LTTE and the LTTE was to be exonerated.

UN action was attempted in 2007 when United Nations Security Council was asked to approve sanctions against Sri Lanka. This was the very first time, said analysts, that there had been a censure motion against Sri Lanka in any international body, since it became independent. This sanction is   about the use of children in armed conflict. Reference is S/2007/758. Security Council was not very enthusiastic about this. I am not sure, but I think this was dropped.

In May 2009, as soon as the war ended, these western countries struck again. The west   has clearly had their UN move ready, to be used in case the Government of Sri Lanka actually won the war. That was a sound possibility. The state army was always far superior to the LTTE. What the LTTE had over the army was superior weapons, given to them by the west. The accusations and allegations against Eelam war IV were prepared in advance even before the war ended, observed Shenali Waduge.

In 2009, US, working through Britain, France and Austria, tried to get the UN Security Council to examine the deaths in the last stage of the Eelam War. This was to be at a Security Council briefing.  But US was not able to secure the 16 signatures needed   and UN Security Council refused to discuss the situation in Sri Lanka.

The move was ‘strenuously warded’ off by seven countries led by China and Russia. These seven, China, Russia, Japan, Turkey, Uganda, Vietnam and Libya,   said that the current situation in Sri Lanka did not warrant a briefing in the Security Council. China vehemently” opposed any discussion in the Security Council on the issue of civilians trapped in the fighting between government Security Forces and the LTTE arguing that it was “purely an internal matter”.

The US then turned to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). The Human Rights Council, unlike Security Council, could be manipulated easily by the US. In May 2009 UN Human Rights Council in Geneva held a special session, called at the request of US, UK, EU and Denmark  to discuss a Swiss-EU resolution against Sri Lanka.  The sponsor was the United States, and the resolution was known as the US resolution on Sri Lanka.

The request for convening the special session was made by Germany on 19th May, the very day hostilities came to an end. The initiative for the resolution however, was taken by the European Union. The resolution called for a comprehensive international investigation of the conduct of Sri Lanka forces in the last phase of the war. Both government and LTTE were accused of killing thousands of civilians. The reference is A/HRC/RES/S-11/. Switzerland had brought   amendments to the Sri Lanka resolution at a closed door meeting held earlier.    The EU was very secretive in its actions,  said Rajiva Wijesinghe. EU was trying for a War Crimes probe, said analysts.

Many NGOs had supported the EU resolution.  The NGO website, Inner City Press presented what it said were UN statistics of civilian killings in the Wanni since January 2009, and quoted the UN Human Rights High Commissioner Navaneethan Pillay as saying that war crimes “may” have been committed in Sri Lanka by both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government.

There was also vigorous lobbying by the Tamil Diaspora. Many  a Special Rapporteur who had not previously been interested in Sri Lanka, issued a press release calling for an independent inquiry into the situation in Sri Lanka, said Dayan Jayatilleke. Rajiva Wijesinghe added, hordes of LTTE sympathizers turned up to buttonhole various ambassadors, and to brief the UN Commissioner for Human rights, and to make aggressive interventions in the debate. They were aided and abetted by a number of NGOs.  But some pro-Eelamists were not satisfied with the text. ‘This text is too little,   they said, ‘it is also toothless’.

The EU assumed that since they were about a dozen themselves, they could get the 16 signatures easily, but the attempt failed. EU was not able to secure the 16 signatures needed. Sri Lanka briefed all states interested in Sri Lanka and got the motion scratched. The Non-Aligned Movement, its chairman, Cuba, and Chairman elect, Egypt as well as China, Russia,   Bangladesh, and Pakistan supported Sri Lanka. 

Sri Lanka then submitted a counter resolution, to the EU resolution, Resolution S-11/1 ‘Assistance to Sri Lanka in the promotion and protection of human rights’. The resolution   showed that LTTE kept civilians as hostages against their will and that the Government liberated almost 300,000 citizens kept by the LTTE. The resolution was commended.

The resolution was passed by 29 for with 12 against and 6 abstaining. Those who voted for Sri Lanka included India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Malaysia, Brazil Cuba, Egypt, Ghana and Indonesia. Those against included Canada, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland and UK. Countries supporting Sri Lanka   criticized the EU resolution. Cuba, who co-sponsored the Sri Lanka resolution, commented on the double standards, and the undesirable politicization of the Human Rights Council.

Sri Lanka’s counter resolution was described as ‘a rare and perhaps unprecedented move,’ by analysts. There could not be a similar instance in the UNHRC history, said the jubilant Sri Lanka group. In fact there had been only 10 previous special sessions like this.  ‘Sri Lanka negotiators never showed their hand while dumbfounding even the most seasoned diplomatic wizards seated round the Geneva table. There was no bubbling over with emotion as they approached the vote. They had poker faces till they triumphed’, reported the media.  

Sri Lanka was able to resist successfully and then prevail over the concerted global efforts of the massive, well funded and thoroughly professional foreign offices of the UK, France, Germany, and Denmark, together with their access to the media, their proxies the INGOs, and their well placed supporters in the upper reaches of the UN system, said Dayan Jayatilleke. 

The Sri Lanka team was spoken of highly, reported the media.  UNHCR president also spoke highly of Sri Lanka attitude to discussing human rights issues, continued the media.  The well orchestrated cohesion of the three fighting forces also came in for praise. While army faced the matter on the ground, the air force dealt with the bunker hopping LTTE. The navy sealed of the supply lines well. Jane’s Defence Weekly of London noted that cutting off the Tigers fortified supply along the nearly 200 mile long beach from form Batticaloa –Trincomalee -Mullativu in the east to Mannar and Puttalam on the west was crucial to the war.

After much protest from Sri Lanka, the web cast of the special session was uploaded to the archive of the UN Human Rights Council. These live webcasts are usually uploaded in a few hours but in this case they said that there had been a technical glitch, complained the government of Sri Lanka, ‘but you can now watch it on http://www.un.org/webcast/unhrc/archive.asp?go=0111’

This ‘victory’ was certainly seen by the public in Sri Lanka. A huge number watched the proceedings on the live webcast. This was also picked up by at least one popular TV channel. There was also a full length colored advertisement in Daily News of 4.6.09 (p 11) listing the 29 countries that spoke in favor of Sri Lanka at Geneva. 

 Reviewing this Resolution severl   years later, an analysts said, what the US have to take note of is that tiny economically weak nation with no coherent action plan on how they were to meet the US challenge and led by two minister and parliamentarians, all pulling in different directions, yet the    US won only by the skin of their teeth.

That is because the other nations understood that this resolution could boomerang on them. The implicate of this resolutions and the precedent that it will set in terms of western interference in the affairs of other nations. The Singaporean   representitvie had in fact told a member of the squabbling Sri Lanka delegation that that they knew Sri Lanka was not fighting just for itself but on behalf of all the others as well. In Sri Lanka any kind of resistance in foreign policy, is seen as arising of immaturity, lack of foreign policy savvy, of being godayas who know nothing of ht outside world. This tendency is strong among the English education elite in Colombo.

The US thereafter sponsored three resolutions against Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in 2012, 2013 and 2014. They were all challenged by the government of Sri Lanka and they were all voted in and accepted by the HRC. The US subsequently said that if Sri Lanka wanted to permanently close its dark chapter it cannot walk alone. Analysts observed that in all these resolutions the US was able to influence the votes and get reluctant countries to at least abstain. Those countries that refrained from voting made speeches in Sri Lanka’s favor and then refrained from voting – which was their way of indicating that they were refraining from voting in favor of Sri Lanka only under duress.

Sri Lanka never had the muscle to combat these resolution observed Palitha Kohona. Why Sri Lanka should have been singled out for special treatment by the HRC for alleged incidents that occurred over six years  is of interest he  said. he HRC has always directed its spotlight on  countries identified selectively for political reasons.

Resolution HRC 19/2 of 22 March 2012, asked Sri Lanka to implement the recommendations of its own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) and to take steps ‘to ensure justice, equity, accountability and reconciliation.’ It called for an action plan” and for the UN Human Rights Commissioner to work ‘in consultation with, and with the concurrence’ of the Sri Lankan government in implementing the LLRC proposals. The US initially wanted a co-sponsor from the Third World for the resolution. Though we lost, we got 15 votes and 8 abstentions, which is good, said Sri Lanka.

This resolution was presented amidst much fanfare .A resolution calling upon Sri Lanka to fully investigate who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Tamil civilians and to establish genuine reconciliation is to be tabled during a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHCR), which opens tomorrow, shouted the media. Britain and the US are preparing for a bitter showdown with Sri Lanka as the two countries engage in a major effort to pass an international resolution rebuking Colombo over alleged war crimes said to have been committed during military operations against ethnic rebels. .

Many thousands of Sri Lankan civilians died or suffered other violations in the final weeks of the long-running civil war in 2009. There has been no complete accounting of those deaths or other violations and no pursuit of accountability for them,” said Eileen Donahoe, the US ambassador to the UNHCR in Geneva. We believe that real reconciliation must be based on accountability, not impunity. There cannot be impunity for large-scale civilian casualties, and that if there is to be real reconciliation it must be based on an accounting of the truth and serious implementation of changes,” concluded Donahoe”.

Diplomats said the wording of the resolution was likely to be modest, because USA wanted to obtain the support of as many of the 47 UNHCR member countries as possible. ” It is unlikely the phrase war crimes” will appear. No-one wants to see the resolution defeated. Those campaigning for the resolution said that given the sensitivity of the issue, even a modest resolution would be a success.

Fred Carver of the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, said, If successful, this motion will show that  the opinion of the world, and in particular the opinion of nations in the global south, has shifted and that the Sri Lankan government can no longer turn a blind eye to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The army has always insisted it adopted a zero civilian casualty policy and for some time claimed no civilians had been killed. After Sri Lanka lost the vote some INGOs and NGOs had thrown grand parties.

 Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu, Sunila Abeyesekera and Nimalka Fernando were in Geneva at the time, reported the media.  They attacked the Rajapaksa administration as undemocratic, repressive and militarized, with abductions and open killings. They called Sri Lanka a ‘hell hole’. It was evident that all three wanted a regime change in Sri Lanka. Sunila Abeyesekera was described as a NGO activist who is heavily funded by the west. Sunanda Deshapriya was also there. Diplomats had privately wondered how these people were tolerated in Sri Lanka, said the media.

However, Sri Lanka representative, Tamara Kunanayagam had   informed the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights that the OHCHR had acted outside its mandate in facilitating the US resolution. OCHCR has played to the political agenda of the USA, raising serious doubts about the impartiality of the OHCHR. The OHCHR is bound by the UN Charter to be neutral, she said.

Kunanayagam observed that an aide at OHCHR, Mungoven, had emailed that the US victory was a ’culmination of the sustained and determined work by many in the team over the past few years.’  He had thanked OCHCR representative in Sri Lanka,   the Secretary General’s advisory panel, the Special Rapporteur on Extra judicial execution, and the Special procedures Branch of the UN.

TNA   welcomed the US resolution against Sri Lanka.TNA said that this is the first step in the pursuit of justice and accountability   and thanked those organizations which showed a firm commitment to the achievement of a future for the Tamils in Sri Lanka  that is marked by equality, dignity, justice and self respect.

Elsewhere in Sri Lanka the resolution was condemned as interference in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka by the Committee of Vice Chancellors of Sri Lanka. It was also condemned by the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation Engineers Association. Rev. Cyril Fernando, of the Diocese of Colombo, said that the action was equal to a direct intervention against Sri Lanka’s independence and sovereignty and an insult to the intelligence of the people.

Nalin de Silva said that some countries were trying to build puppet regimes around the world that is why they created separatist leaders and funded them. S. L. Gunasekera stated that there was a danger of President Rajapaksa being assassinated and a pro-western government set in place.  America’s final aim was to install a pro western person in power here after destabilizing the county and ousting President Rajapaksa, making human rights violations the battle cry.

There were large demonstrations in Sri Lanka against the US resolution. The public voiced their anger over attempts by US and western countries to meddle in the internal affairs of the country under cover of human rights, observed the media.  The Resolution was also condemned by the ‘cream of the business community’ who thronged to Nelum Pokuna roundabout, reported the media. They included representatives from John Keels Holdings, Aitken Spence, Sri Lanka Telecom, Mobitel, Lanka Bell, dialog, Etisalat, Hilton Colombo, Mount Lavinia Hotel, Commercial Bank and Hatton National Bank.

The Geneva resolution of 2012 is nothing new, said Sri Lanka.  We knew that some western and European countries had launched a conspiracy against Sri Lanka. We saw this at the time of the humanitarian operation in Eelam War IV. At that time these same parties used various tactics to turn the operation back. They took the position that Sri Lanka should give in to LTTE terrorism and divide the country. These agents will continue their project aimed at dividing Sri Lanka into two like Sudan. The project will continue from foreign lands and they will try to create instability and anarchy within the country.

US resolution at Geneva 2012 isn’t an end in itself it is as scène setter, it sets the scene in which the case for external inquiry and interference can be made beyond reasonable doubt said Jayatilleke. However making that case depend upon proving that domestic remedies are not forthcoming within the time frame given by the UN, if so then the case for an international inquiry is already pretty much made, if  Sri Lanka refuses to cooperate then the process will move to the next level of the escalation ladder, warned Jayatilleke.

The 2013 US sponsored resolution was about accountability and promoting reconciliation in Sri Lanka (A/HRC/22/L.1/Rev.1). Robert O. Blake, Assistant Secretary of State for south and central Asia said in an interview with BBC Sinhala service that US had closely consulted with India on this resolution.

The resolution was adopted by 23 votes with 13 against and 8 abstentions.  the ones who voted with US are those who are economically weak. They cannot impose sanctions on Sri Lanka. Those who oppose are those who are economically strong or moving towards that,  observed critics.  During the Council’s proceedings, Sri Lanka’s representative spoke out against the resolution.

UN’s Human Rights Council has passed a resolution highly critical of Sri Lanka’s record, reported the BBC in 2013. The resolution encourages Sri Lanka to conduct an independent and credible investigation into alleged war crimes. Though milder than its initial drafts, this resolution is more detailed, and tougher than last year’s. Although it suggests Sri Lanka set up a “truth-seeking mechanism” on abuses and calls for an investigation, it does not demand an international one. It also asks Colombo to extend invitations to some of the UN’s special rapporteurs.

The two resolutions of 2012 and 2013 refer to accountability and Kunanayakam has pointed that it advanced the possibility of R2P. R2P is applicable for genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Accountability she says is only a pretext for Washington to advance its geopolitical interests in the region.  They are meticulously structured for this.

 In 2014, the US again put forward a resolution   against Sri Lanka to the HRC (HRC 25/1 of 27 March 2014). The resolution was to open an international inquiry into alleged war crimes committed by both the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the final stages of a decades-long conflict that ended in 2009.

 In this Resolution the Human Rights Council emphasised the importance of a comprehensive approach to transitional justice incorporating the full range of judicial and non-judicial measures, including, inter-alia, individual prosecutions, reparations, truth-seeking, institutional reforms, vetting of public employees and officials”.

Unlike the resolutions of 2009, 2012 and 2013, this resolution asked the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to ‘investigate, assess and monitor’ the human rights situation in Sri Lanka. This undermines national sovereignty, observed the media. The resolution was adopted with 23 members voting in favor of the resolution, while 12 voted against. Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, China, Russia, Maldives voted against it. India, South Africa, Japan, and Indonesia voted for. There were 12 abstentions. Which showed that those who supported the Resolution numbered less than half of the HRC, commented G.L.Pieris.

Both groups of countries, for Sri Lanka and against Sri Lanka, commented on the resolution. The intrusive manner in which the investigations are carried on against Sri Lanka is unwarranted they said. The resolution ‘went beyond the mandate of the High Commissioner said Russia,  ‘double standard of play” (Cuba), “aimed at developing countries forcing them into submission” (Philippines), intolerable interference in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka” (Pakistan)  “people have the right to choose their own path” (China), serious risks created by intervention” (Venezuela), “the biased approach to specific countries” (Ecuador).failure “to take into account continuing progress” (Thailand)  and ‘ attempt to stifle the “energy” (Indonesia).

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navaneeethan Pillay noted that in recent years, the Sri Lanka Government has established various mechanisms with the task to investigate past violations. But none have had the independence to be effective or inspire confidence among victims and witnesses,” she stated. New evidence continues to emerge, and witnesses are willing to come forward to testify before international mechanisms in which they have confidence and which can guarantee their protection, the High Commissioner added.

This shows that an international inquiry is not only warranted, but also possible, and can play a positive role in eliciting new information and establishing the truth where domestic inquiry mechanisms have failed.”The Council has in the past called on the Sri Lankan Government to take credible steps to ensure accountability for alleged serious violations committed during the final months of the conflict.

HRC requested the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to undertake a comprehensive investigation” into alleged serious violations and abuses of human rights and related crimes by both parties, and hold perpetrators accountable.  A move to remove the paragraph empowering an international investigation was defeated. The OCHRC did as it was told and prepared a report, known today as OISL report.

HRC also reiterated its call on the government of Sri Lanka to implement the constructive recommendations made in the report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission. It also called on the Government to release publicly the results of its investigations into alleged violations by security forces, including the attack on unarmed protesters in Weliweriya in August 2013.

 Godfrey Goonetilleke and Asoka Gunawardene of Marga Institute and Jeevan Thangarajah of Consortium of Humanitarian agencies   attended this event, to hear the US plaint against Sri Lanka. They opposed the position taken by the UN Secretary General’s Panel of experts, (known as Darusman Report) and the International Crimes Evidence project that said the army deliberately killed Tamil civilians. The evidence used is limited and sources not given, they observed.

The US intention to sponsor a fresh resolution was first announced when US Assistant Secretary of State for Central and South Asian Affairs Nisha Biswal visited Sri Lanka in 2015. In 2015,   the Yahapalana government of Sri Lanka co-sponsored a resolution against itself at the Human Rights Council in Geneva. This is   HRC Resolution 30/1 of 2015 on Promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka. This resolution was based on a report prepared in accordance with the 2014 resoltuion,  by Sandra Beidas, formerly of the Amnesty International.

Having resisted 3 previous resolutions since 2012, Colombo decided to co-sponsor resolution 30/1 that had unprecedented 23 introductory paragraphs that set the stage for 20 operational paragraphs, filling 5 pages. 

 The text says the resolution was sponsored by Macedonia, Montenegro, the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland and the United States of America. Sri Lanka is not named in the text as a sponsor. Sri Lanka representative in Geneva, Ravinatha Ariyasinha refused to accept the Resolution and tried to negotiate different terms.  Yahapalana government overruled the Ambassador’s objections and ordered him to accept the draft resolution  ‘just as it was.’ The Resolution was passed without a vote.

However, Pakistan observed that no self respecting country would agree to the intrusive measures advocated in this resolution. He wanted to know how this resolution was to be funded and whether the funders were the same as those who had sponsored the resolution.  If so the whole process will be tainted. He got no  answer to his inquiry.  India warned that an intrusive approach would undermine national sovereignty. The final resolution had only the support of 23 of the 47 members.

Resolution 30/1 is not a Human Rights resolution. It is a political document supporting Tamil separatism. It  starts by recognizing the now despised Yahapalana government, saying the resolution  welcomes ‘the historic free and fair democratic elections in January and August 2015’. The resolution then went on to emphasize the need for Devolution, to recognize the need for a ‘Political Settlement’   by which it meant a new Constitution. The resolution then called for the continuance of Provincial Councils and the 13th Amendment and finally announced that land in the High Security Zones in Jaffna must be returned to the rightful civilian owners.

The Resolution then goes on to make some deadly suggestions. It calls for individual prosecutions, reparations, truth-seeking, institutional reform, vetting of public employees and officials, provide remedies to victims, promote healing and reconciliation. It points out the need to recognize international human rights law, international refugee law and international humanitarian law.

The Resolution   then prescribes four specific actions the Yahapalana government has to take.  Firstly, a judicial mechanism to investigate allegations of violations and abuses of human rights.  Secondly, A Commission for truth, justice, reconciliation and non-recurrence. Thirdly, an Office for Missing Persons (OMP) and fourthly an Office for Reparations. The Resolution also permits the government to remove military officers suspected of having violated HR even if there is no evidence. This is actually a purge of the armed forces, declared analysts.

Laksiri Fernando noted that there are two tricky points at the end of the resolution, regarding the involvement of the High Commissioner and the High Commissioner’s Office. This is where the ‘neo-liberal human rights interventionism’ is apparent. The government of Sri Lanka, or its delegation in Geneva, should be extremely careful in endorsing such a resolution again, he warned. The HRC has unveiled a political agenda meant to transform the country, at the expense of its unitary status, observed Shamindra Ferdinando.

The resolution has been drafted craftily to make it marketable to public opinion in Sri Lanka said Tamara Kunanayagam and also to ease the fears of developing countries in the Human Rights Council, who will otherwise object to a precedent that could endanger their own independence and sovereignty,. The text is scattered with references to voluntary commitments made by the Government of Sri Lanka and to domestic initiatives. International involvement is presented as support to these domestic processes, not a substitute.

To the astonishment of Sri Lanka, Yahapalana government openly embraced the Resolution. The President said that the implementation of the resolution will result in promoting democracy, reconciliation and respect for our armed forces. SLFP officially announced at a press conference that the UNP and the SLFP had jointly agreed on the implementation of the Resolution.”

Mangala Samaraweera, then foreign minister wrote an open letter to Mahinda Rajapaksa where he said that the Resolution was a victory for Sri Lanka’s new foreign policy, Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans. The Resolution was not an isolated one. It was based on Yahapalana government plans for good governance. These plans had been carefully developed by the government over many months.  The bold decision to co sponsor the UNHRC resolution last October was a massive foreign policy victory for Sri Lanka. It was adopted without a vote by consensus. Under Mahinda Rajapaksa the world was divided over Sri Lanka, because of the dismantling of democracy and abuse of human rights . Under Yahapalana   the world which was divided towards Sri Lanka unanimously rallied round Sri Lanka,  he said.

The charge has been made with examples that the Sinhala translation of the UNHRC resolution was distorted and sugar coated. The Foreign Ministry published on its website a Sinhala translation of the resolution, leaving out the sensitive parts so that any Sinhala speaking person reading it would be completely misled as to the contents of the UNHRC resolution. The Island chanced upon the discrepancies between the original resolution and its Sinhala version and exposed the matter.

This UNHRC Resolution of 2015 is an unprecedented resolution, observed the media. There hadn’t been a previous instance, at Geneva, where an elected government co-sponsored a Resolution against its own country, said Island, where a country welcomed punitive action proposed on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations. Sri Lanka created history by co-sponsoring a resolution against itself, which was totally against its interests.

Why the government has opted for co sponsoring this resolution defies comprehension said the media. What decided the Yahapalana   government to sponsor this Resolution, they asked. The earlier government put up a good fight all these years in the face of tremendous pressure from the US led western bloc, commented Island editorial.  The present government had betrayed the country in co- sponsoring the UN resolution with the US said N.AS.de S Amaratunga. Dayan Jayatilleke observed that the Resolution had not received the approval of Parliament and it had not been   endorsed by the Cabinet therefore the Government of Sri Lanka was not bound by it.

However, M.A. Sumanthiran had told   the   USA Congressional Caucus for Ethnic and religious freedom in Sri Lanka in Washington that  ‘the text of the 2015 Resolution is a negotiated text.’ There had been a tripartite consensus. TNA negotiated with the Yahapalana government with the United States of America also participating. ’I was personally involved in the negotiations, TNA had settled for a hybrid model though they had originally asked for an international inquiry. TNA wanted the full implementation of the resolution.   The Global Tamil Forum spokesperson, Suren Surendiran told Island that agreement on the text of the resolution has been reached following negotiations among what he called ‘core group members at the UNHRC’, the government of Sri Lanka, and representatives of the Tamils.

Yahapalana Government’s meek acceptance of resolution 30/1 in Geneva, in 2015 is an abdication of its sacred responsibilities toward nation, people and its armed forces. It is the responsibility and duty of the Government to safeguard the sovereignty, integrity and independence of the State, and to ensure that the dignity of the nation is respected, said Tamara Kunanayagam and Palitha Kohona.  Supportive nations were prevented from raising their voices in our defenses because we joined with the USA in the resolution, observed G.L.Pieris.

Some thought that having accepted the 2015 resolution the country would become a target at the subsequent sessions of HRC. At the annual sessions of the Human Rights Council on June 28, 2016, the Human Rights Commissioner dealt extensively with Sri Lanka. In his speech, ‘Promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka’, he explained, in no uncertain terms, what Geneva expected Sri Lanka to do.

Yet another resolution on Sri Lanka, supported by the US, was adopted at the 2017 sessions of the HRC, Resolution A/HRC/34/L.1. This too was co-sponsored by Sri Lanka and passed without a vote. This resolution reaffirmed the UNHRC resolution 30/1 of 1 October 2015. The UN Human Rights Commissioner wanted Sri Lanka to implement recommendations contained   in the 2015   resolution, and the investigation undertaken by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

The resolution gave the government of Sri Lanka two years to deliver on the commitments made in UNHRC Resolution No 30/1 of October 2015. It also requested the Commissioner and his special procedure mandate holders to strengthen their technical assistance to Sri Lanka on the promotion and protection of human rights, truth, justice, reconciliation and accountability.

The Commissioner called on the international community to investigate and prosecute those allegedly responsible for war crimes. He also wanted other countries to abide by the recommendations. The Commissioner also stated that if Sri Lanka did not deliver the goods, Geneva would be compelled to explore measures such as ‘universal jurisdiction’. Universal Jurisdiction allows the courts of another country to prosecute a Sri Lankan citizen for alleged violations of crimes against humanity normally outside its national jurisdiction.

The UNHCR resolution permits the government to remove military officers suspect of having violated HR through a vetting process even if there is now evidence, this is actually a PURGE of the armed forces.

For the first time, there was NGO representation from the anti-Eelamist group at Geneva. Global Forum of Sri Lanka  led by Ven. Bemgmuwe Nalaka , consisting of  Rear Admiral Sarath Weerasekera, . Nalaka Godahewa, Anuradha Yahampath and several others including Wasantha Keerthiratne, Chairman of the Global Forum, participated in this session as a non government agency of Sri Lanka. Nalaka Godahewa, Sarath Weerasekera and Anuradha Yahampath, spoke at the session. They said that the Tamils were a well assimilated group in Sri Lanka. They were not discriminated against. They criticized the High Commissioner for his bias against Sri Lanka.

Earlier, at a side event, the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) called for the arrest of Weerasekara accusing him of being involved in war crimes in Sri Lanka. A heated exchange then ensued as Weerasekara rubbished the claims and in return, called for the arrest of the LTTE supporters in Geneva. In media interviews given from Geneva, Weerasekara criticized Nimalka Fernando and Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu, who were also in Geneva, for pushing for action against Sri Lanka.

Analysts noted, with contempt, that Sri Lanka had stayed silent when Sri Lanka came up for discussion at the HRC session. Other countries used their ‘Right of Reply’ to answer allegations, clarify any confusion and deny charges.  Sri Lanka’s official representatives did not do so, observed Sanja Jayatilleke. During the ‘General debate on Racism, racial discrimination, Xenophobia and related intolerance,’ 14 NGOs spoke critically of Sri Lanka .Again Sri Lanka did not reply.

Yahapalana government had actually thanked those who had brought this resolution, observed shocked critics. The Director of Information, on behalf of the government, issued a one page statement thanking the US-UK led countries for backing the second resolution, which inter alia, wanted foreign judges, observed Shamindra Ferdinando.

What exactly did the UN Human Rights Commissioner say in his report on Sri Lanka, to make Sri Lanka declare its ‘appreciation’ asked Chandraprema. Firstly, the Commissioner referred to findings of the OHCHR investigation of September 2015. This investigation was outside the established procedure of the UNHRC. In the report, the OHCHR had accused the Sri Lankan government of every conceivable war crime including unlawful killings, torture, rape, illegal incarceration, enforced disappearances, abduction, deprivation of humanitarian assistance and soon.

Secondly, the UN Human Rights Commissioner has stated that the report of the Consultative Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms, be implemented. (This is the task force appointed by President Sirisena, chaired by Manouri Muttetuwegama) speaker after speaker among the originators and the sponsors of the latest resolution against Sri Lanka – the UN Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Al Hussein, the EU representative and the representative of Britain were all harping on the need to implement the recommendations of the Consultative Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms, said Chandraprema. Implementing this Task Force report would have even worse implications than implementing Resolution 30/1, he observed.

Thirdly, the UN Human Rights Commissioner wants the establishment of a specialized court which should include international judges, defence lawyers, prosecutors and investigators, to investigate allegations of war crimes. His justification included the lack of progress into certain cases such as the killing of Lasantha Wickrematunga and the acquittal by a ‘Sinhalese jury’ of the suspects in the Kiliveddy incident where 23 Tamil civilians are said to have been killed.

The TNA demanded the full implementation of the Geneva Resolution. TNA issued the following statement,  All Sri Lanka’s obligations in terms of UN Human Rights Council Resolution 30/1 of 1st October 2015, co-sponsored by the Sri Lankan Government, must be fully implemented. These obligations must be fulfilled under strict conditions, under the monitoring of an office of the UN High Commissioner for Human rights, which must be established in Sri Lanka. The UN Human Rights Council must ensure that, in the event that the Sri Lankan Government fails to fulfill the abovementioned obligations by way of an appropriate mechanism, victims will receive the intended benefits of the fulfillment of such obligations, by way of international mechanisms.

The British government also wants Sri Lanka to fully implement the Resolution. Foreign & Commonwealth Office Minister, Mark Field who visited Colombo and Jaffna in October 2017, said “The UK is committed to the full implementation of Resolution 34/1 and will continue to support the government of Sri Lanka in its efforts to promote reconciliation and human rights”. He raised with Foreign Minister Marapana the importance of the Sri Lankan government implementing in full its commitments under UN Human Rights Council Resolution 34/1, which rolled over the commitments made under 30/1.Resolution

A two year postponement means that this matter will come up for discussion at the March 2019 Sessions of the UNHRC. However, 2019 will be election year for this government, warned Chandraprema. It is best that this UNHRC resolution 30/1 be taken off the radar altogether by 2019. If the government implements even a part of Resolution 30/1 which it so ill-advisedly co-sponsored, that will help the Opposition at the Presidential elections of 2019.

The 2015 Resolution   took place when Mangala Samaraweera was Minister of Foreign Affairs. Dr Mathias Keitel, from Germany, has an interesting piece in the Asian Tribune titled “Foreign Minister Samaraweera Must Go” with the comment “My recent visit to Sri Lanka, the country that I love most, fills me with dark foreboding as its vital interests are being systematically compromised by its buccaneering Foreign Minister.” He gives a detailed analysis of the Geneva resolution and points out the uniqueness (foolishness) of Sri Lanka to agree to co-sponsor the resolution against itself and comments: ‘The Foreign Minister has not learned the fundamental rule of being the chief representative of the country overseas. I.e. to represent the country’s best interests with fortitude, dignity and quiet pride.”

“It is also difficult not to draw the conclusion that the UNHRC resolution was not really an attempt to consolidate human rights and restore good governance but a thinly disguised Endeavour to destroy the iconic super hero status, especially of the victorious Sri Lankan soldier, and reduce it to the level of a common criminal. The Foreign Minister’s solicitous and breathless anxiety to comply with the demands of the West and the Tamil expatriate groups may well have contributed to realizing this goal. Dayan Jayatilleke observed that Foreign Minister Samaraweera poses an existential threat to the State’s sovereignty and security, and gravely jeopardizes political stability and governability.”

Minister Mangala Samaraweera had his own take on the matter. He said Sri Lanka has made considerable strides from soft authoritarianism towards consolidating rights based democracy with deeply entrenched institutions and values. The country will never be able to achieve the full socio economic development potential, if country fails to address grievances, that risk plunging our nation into conflict once again, he announced.

The set of actions that the Government has identified to deal with the past in a comprehensive manner, addressing the grievances of all victims, include truth seeking, justice reparation and measures for guaranteeing non recurrence, he continued. Traumatic memories do not simply vanish. We have learned through experience since independence that grievances that are left unaddressed can go on for generations, becoming entrenched and holding the risk of descending into cycles of violence, Samaraweera continued.

When serious allegations of human rights violation and war crimes are leveled at a country it is the duty of the government to prove such allegations wrong through a credible process of investigator and inquiry. Also to expose the perpetrators as well as those in the chain of command so that the good name of the country can be restored, said Samaraweera.

The 2015 resolution will help heal our wounds and genuinely unite the country. It will clear the good name of the members of the army and all those against whom there are unfair allegations. rue war heroes like Sarath Fonseka have nothing to feat, only those who carried out criminal acts. And those who gave order to carry out heinous crimes. The video footage in Channel 4 documentary is not only authentic but was given to Channel 4 by member of the armed forces who were shocked at the some of the acts carried out due to orders from above., Samaraweera said.

We have prevented economic sanctions and the indignity of a foreign inquiry.  Many of the countries which had distanced themselves from Sri Lanka under the Rajapaksa government’s policy of self imposed isolation are all backing Sri Lanka, concluded Samaraweera.

Mangala Samaraweera wrote an open letter to  Mahinda Rajapaksa  where said that the UNHCR resolution was a victory for Sri Lanka new foreign policy, Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans. Under Rajapaksa the world was divided over Sri Lanka the US and EU, our main export markets accounting  for over 50% of our exports, were concerned with  the Rajapaksa government dismantling of democracy and abuse of  human rights. the resolution was not an isolated one. It was based on the Sri Lanka government plans for good governance etc.  These plans had been carefully developed by the government over many months by studying the experiences of Sri Lanka own past as well as those of many countries. the resolution will help heal our wounds and genuinely unite the country, continued Mangala.

The bold decision to co sponsor the UNHRC resolution last October was a massive foreign policy victory for Sri Lanka. The world which was divided towards Sri Lanka unanimously rallied round Sri Lanka. The resolution was drafted on the basis of the government carefully deliberated plans that I outlined in Sept 2015. It was adopted without a vote by consensus, many of the countries which had distanced themselves from Sri Lanka  under your government poly of self imposed isolation are all backing  Sri Lanka , ‘Our ambassador in Geneva tried to negotiate different terms that was deliberately stopped by the government which insisted on accepting the US sponsored resolution, just as it was.’ Concluded Mangala  

The United States in a Press release, applauded the administration of President Maithripala Sirisena for its continuing efforts to promote reconciliation. The statement was issued by Mark C Toner, Acting Spokesperson of the State Department in Washington.The US stated that the UNHRC Resolution on promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka would help ensure a non-recurrence of conflict and strengthen democratic governance and freedom for all Sri Lankans.

The press release issued by the US State Department:On Monday, March 13 at the UN Human Rights Council, the United States and other members of the Friends of Sri Lanka Core Group tabled a draft resolution on promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka that reflects our enduring commitment to lasting peace and justice for all the people of Sri Lanka.

The United States worked in close consultation with the United Kingdom, Montenegro and Macedonia and in partnership with the Government of Sri Lanka, to draft the resolution.We look forward to the adoption of the text, which will support reconciliation and justice in Sri Lanka, help ensure a non-recurrence of conflict and strengthen democratic governance and freedoms for all Sri Lankans.The United States is pleased that Sri Lanka has agreed once again to co-sponsor the resolution, and invites like-minded UN members to demonstrate support for reconciliation and peace in Sri Lanka by adding their names to the list of co-sponsors.The United States applauds the administration of President Sirisena for its continuing efforts to promote reconciliation.  ( continued)

Chairman, Sri Lankan Solidarity Movement

Our organisation, The Sri Lankan Solidarity Movement, is extremely alarmed by attempts even by sections of the Sri Lankan media and even patriotic organisations urging the Sri Lankan Government to accept secret defence reports written by our adversaries, the US, UK imperialists, which accuse our Sri Lankan Armed Forces of being responsible for the perishing of civilians during the last phases of the war with no proof whatsoever to prove such bogus charges. In sharp contrast, our contention is that such secret reports written by our adversaries, the US, UK imperialists, should be categorically rejected outright since acceptance of such bogus charges by the Sri Lankan Government will only place our Sri Lankan Armed Forces in deep trouble.

Those of us who have actually lived in the US, UK, EU, Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden etc. know very well that these countries routinely lie about those countries that they do not like and seek intervention in, in their secret defence reports. For example, these countries made up lies about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction and Iraq possessing chemical weapons as huge dossiers which were produced by the US, UK etc. which turned out to be totally false. These huge dossiers were prepared to justify the attack against Iraq. Similarly in Libya, the US, UK etc. stated that the Libyan Army of Gaddafi attacked civilians in order to justify their totally unjustified attack against Libya. It turned out later that the only people the Libyan Army of Gaddafi attacked were terrorists and not civilians. Therefore the US, UK routinely lie about those countries where they seek intervention in. The CIA, MI5 use the powerful Western media to spread lies about those countries that they seek intervention in. All secret defence reports produced by the US, UK, EU, Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden etc. are in fact, in reality, produced by the CIA and the MI5 although, officially, it may say that a defence attaché produced such a report.

In Sri Lanka’s case, although the said secret defence reports were apparently produced by the US, UK defence attachés who were resident in May, 2009 in Sri Lanka, in actuality, these secret defence reports have been produced by the CIA and the MI5. What we think is that the US, UK’s big lie spread about forty thousand civilians perishing was proved totally false. Then the US, UK spread the next big lie which was twenty thousand civilians perishing. This also, over the years, proved to be totally false. Therefore the US, UK have now produced secret defence reports suggesting that in the case of the UK, seven thousand civilians perishing and in the case of the US, five thousand persons perishing of which 25% were LTTE terrorists (all in a time period of the last five months of the conflict!). We think that these secret reports were produced maybe a few months ago, but backdated to show as if they were produced in May, 2009, in order to cover up the previous big lies of the US, UK etc. However, these latest reports are also big lies and the US, UK hope that the stupid Sri Lankan Government accepts such bogus reports and thus plunging our Sri Lankan Armed Forced into deep trouble prompting independent international investigations and use of hybrid courts. However, these charges are totally false with no proof whatsoever to prove such bogus charges. Therefore, our contention is that the Sri Lankan Government should categorically reject outright such bogus charges since our Sri Lankan Armed Forces fought only with LTTE terrorists and only LTTE terrorists died, as a result, during the last phases of the conflict. No civilians perished during the last phases of the conflict at the hands of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces as we have shown by use of irrefutable proof below.

Our best informant as far as the last few months of the war is concerned is our own Sri Lanka Army who were there all the time, after all, and knows exactly what happened. It is our own Sri Lanka Army, Navy etc. and those commandeers who commandeered those divisions of the Sri Lanka Army, who we should turn to for factual information.

When observing the events of the last year or so of the war, the LTTE itself admitted that they drove the entire civilian population under their control all the way from Mannar in the North West coast, all the way up to the North East coast of Mullaitivu way before the Sri Lanka Army reached any of the LTTE held towns such as Kilinochchi, Mankulum etc. Over 300,000 civilians, partially from the Mannar and Vavuniya districts and totally from the Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu districts were driven away by the LTTE all the way up to the North East coast of Mullaitivu. Once the Sri Lankan Army commenced advancing from Mannar, the LTTE quickly evacuated the Vanni civilians and made them travel deep into the Vanni inlands. Therefore, civilians were not anywhere near the fighting between the Sri Lankan Army and the LTTE until mid February to mid May, 2009. Therefore, when the army captured Kilinochchi, Mankulum etc. and all other LTTE towns, there were no civilians there to be affected. The army only fought with the LTTE terrorists at all these places. In newspaper reports we read, the Sri Lanka Army stated that when they entered Kilinochchi, it was a ghost town, since all the civilians have been made to move deep into the Vanni inlands quite sometime prior to the arrival of the army. In a programme on TV, the Sri Lanka Army stated that at Mankulum, which was an LTTE held town, when the army took over, around 60 LTTE terrorists perished, according to the army.

Even at Puthukudiyiruppu, which was a major LTTE camp where a major battle took place, there were no civilians there to be affected, since the army fought only with LTTE terrorists. Therefore our contention is that there could not have been any civilians casualties all the way from Mannar, via capturing of Kilinochchi, Mankulum, Puthukudiyiruppu etc. since there were no civilians at any of these places at all since all the civilians were driven away by the LTTE deep into the Vanni, as the LTTE itself admitted. The army only fought with LTTE terrorists and both our soldiers and LTTE terrorists did perish, as a result. Subramanium Sivagami alias ‘Colonel’ Thamilini, leader of the LTTE women’s political wing, in her book published prior to her death due to an illness recently, says that after the Sri Lankan Army secured Kilinochchi, the final counter offensive launched by the LTTE at Puthukudiyiruppu during the first week of April, 2009, led to the loss of over 600 LTTE cadres, including several senior LTTE personnel. This, again, suggests that it is the LTTE terrorists alone who the army encountered and it is only the LTTE terrorists who perished in these operations.

It is only during the last few weeks of the war that the army even encountered any civilians, after reaching the Nandikadal lagoon area. Here, the army were given strict instructions to use only light weapons when dealing with the LTTE terrorists by the Sri Lankan Government. To acquire an idea of how vast this area is, the Nandikadal lagoon is a vast lagoon which is as vast as the Negombo lagoon. Therefore, imagine how vast this area is. There was a vast land area to the North of the lagoon. It is best to purchase a map of the area from The Survey Department in order to acquire a knowledge of how vast this area is. The LTTE built earthen berms at one end of the vast land area stopping the army from advancing. These berms however covered only a small strip of this vast land area. The army could not see across these berms and fired at the LTTE terrorists who were on the other side of the earthen berms but using light weapons. Therefore, since these earthen berms covered only an infinitesimally small area of this vast land area, only the LTTE terrorists on the other side firing back at the army could have been affected by the army firing at them. Civilians, we are sure, took refuge in the vast land area beyond and therefore they could not have been affected by the firing between the army and the LTTE terrorists across these earthen berms since the earthen berms took up only an infinitesimally small area of this vast land area and to the South was also the vast Nadikadal lagoon, as large as the Negombo lagoon itself.

One thing to keep in mind is that there is irrefutable independent confirmation that the army used light weapons only during this time. This confirmation is contained in a book published recently, written by Sri Shiv Shankar Menon, the Indian Foreign Secretary at the time. He states in his book that a troika inclusive of Shiv Shankar Menon flew to Sri Lanka regularly using the Indian Air Force in order to meet their counterpart troika in Sri Lanka i.e. Basil Rajapakshe, Gotabhaya Rajapakshe and Lalith Weerathunga. Shiv Shankar Menon states that Pranab Mukheerjee the Indian Foreign Minister was kept informed at all times of every meeting and happening that took place. He says that all the requests of the Indian Government i.e. only to use light weapons due to the civilian presence in the area, corridors for civilians to escape, adequate food and medicine deliveries into the area by sea, safe areas where no conflict was to take place and where civilians can take refuge, evacuation of all persons who were ill by sea, Indian medical teams at standby at Pulmuddai, Trincomalee etc., requests to the LTTE terrorists to put down arms and surrender and no harm will come to them etc. all these requests by the Indian Government were adhered to and implemented by the Sri Lankan Government to the satisfaction of the Indian Government. Therefore there is irrefutable proof that the army used light weapons only.

Since the LTTE terrorists shut all land routes by the end of January into the area by use of earthen berms, civilians who fell ill due to normal illnesses or LTTE terrorists who were injured due to firing between the army and the LTTE terrorists across the earthen berms, all were evacuated by ICRC ferries from the 10th of February 2009 until the 12th of May 2009, according to the ICRC. Regular ICRC press releases at the time states that from the 10th of February 2009 until the 12th of May 2009, a period of twelve weeks, the ICRC evacuated 13,500 persons in total from the area, from Puthamathalan to the Pulmuddai base hospital by sea where there were Indian medical teams as well as Sri Lankan medical teams to treat all patients. Of the 13,500, only half were patients i.e. 6,750. The rest, 6,750, were a relative or a friend who accompanied each patient. Of the 6,750 patients, half were evacuated due to normal illnesses such as flu, cold, cough, diarrhoea, pressure etc. who we can assume were civilians i.e. 3,375. Only the other half, i.e. 3,375 were evacuated due to conflict related injuries i.e. LTTE terrorists since all, LTTE terrorists and civilians, were evacuated during this time. We can conclude that if only 3,375 LTTE terrorists were injured during these three months then only around 845 (taking into account a 1:4 ratio of conflict related deaths to conflict related injuries) or even 675 (taking into account a 1:5 ratio of conflict related deaths to conflict related injuries) or even less LTTE terrorists would have actually perished. Therefore, no more than 845 and most probably 675 LTTE terrorists would have perished from the 10th of February 2009 until the 12th of May 2009 due to the conflict. How did we come up with this ratio? Major General Kamal Gunaratne in his just released book says that over 5,900 Sri Lankan Forces were killed while over 29,000 were injured from 2007 until May, 2009. This provided us with the 1:5 ratio which should be similar for the LTTE terrorists, too. Realistically, this ratio can be taken as even 1:6 since only light weapons were used at the time. What is interesting is that Major General Kamal Gunaratne says that between January, 2009 until May 2009, around 2,500 Sri Lankan Army soldiers perished in the war.

We also know of an incident where the LTTE fired at and killed around one hundred civilians who tried to escape to the army’s side from mid February 2009 until the 12th of May 2009. There was also the incident where an LTTE suicide bomber dressed as a civilian blew herself up near a makeshift IDP reception centre killing Sri Lankan military personnel as well as a few civilians. The one hundred civilians fired at and killed by the LTTE would have been buried at the LTTE graveyards created by the LTTE within the area concerned.

What also needs to be taken into consideration is that by the 11th of May, 2009, the LTTE leadership let the civilians leave to the army’s side. From the 12th of May 2009, there were no civilians in the Nandikadal lagoon area. Therefore, from the 12th of May 2009 until the 18th of May, 2009 there was only Prabhakaran and his gang of around three hundred LTTE terrorists who hid in the Nandikadal lagoon area and the army went after them from the 12th of May 2009 onwards. From newspaper reports from that time, we read that Prabhakaran and around three hundred LTTE terrorists died at the hands of the army from the 12th of May 2009 until the 18th of May 2009 around the Nadikadal lagoon area. We also read from newspaper reports that once the conflict was over on the 19th of May 2009, our soldiers were told to bury those LTTE terrorists that perished during this time in the LTTE graveyards that the LTTE already created in the area. Therefore around three hundred perished LTTE terrorists would have been buried at these LTTE graveyards after the 19th of May 2009 by the army.

The Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights Project of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) acquired and analyzed commercial high-resolution satellite imagery of the area concerned. Imagery analysis was initially requested by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International USA (AI-USA) (the ill intention of HRW and AI-USA was to place the Sri Lanka Army in trouble, of course). However, only three gravesites were found from satellite imagery taken of the area concerned on five separate days, the 23rd of March 2009, 19th April 2009, 06th May 2009, 10th May 2009 and the 24th of May 2009. One contained 342 graves and was considered to be an LTTE graveyard. Another contained 960 graves and was considered to be an LTTE graveyard. The third contained 44 burials and was considered to be a civilian’s graveyard. Therefore in total around 1,346 graves were found in the area concerned as three separate graveyards.

What is noteworthy is that the LTTE graveyard containing 960 graves was present prior to 23rd of March, 2009 and did not expand since that time. The civilian grave of 44 graves was also present prior to 23rd of March, 2009 and did not expand since that time. However, the Southernmost LTTE graveyard expanded from 6th of May, 2009 to 10th of May, 2009 by 77 graves. By the 24th of May, this Southernmost LTTE graveyard expanded by a further 70 graves to 342.

This suggests that when the Army breached a berm and advanced further on the 20th and 21st of April, 2009 (with most of the civilians evacuating to the army’s side as a result, however with some civilians and LTTE terrorists remaining), the army took extreme precautions when engaging with the LTTE terrorists since that time, since the LTTE graveyard expanded only by 77 graves until the 10th of May, 2009. By the 11th of May, 2009 the LTTE leadership allowed all the remaining civilians to evacuate from the area to the army’s side. From the 12th of May until 18th of May, 2009, the army went after Prabhakaran and a gang of perhaps three hundred LTTE terrorists within the Nandikadal lagoon, located further to the South. Prabhakaran and his gang of LTTE terrorists are presumed to have perished at the hands of the Army during the crossfire between them. Therefore the expansion of the Southernmost LTTE graveyard by a further 70 graves by the 24th of May, 2009 would have been the army itself burying these perished LTTE terrorists at this LTTE graveyard since in numerous TV programmes, we saw that the army was told to find and bury any perished LTTE terrorists within the Nandikadal lagoon area from the 19th of May, 2009 onwards, once the conflict ended.

The conclusion from the above is that, as a maximum, around 1,346 graves of the LTTE have been found in the area concerned. Of this, at least 845 and a further three hundred are of LTTE combatants themselves as shown above. Over one hundred civilians were shot at and killed by the LTTE itself who may have been buried at these graveyards, too. Since, as stated above, the over 300,000 Vanni population were driven by the LTTE itself deep into the Mullaitivu area, the army did not encounter any civilians as their operations advanced, until mid February, 2009 onwards. Therefore civilians could only have perished from mid February, 2009 until the 12th of May 2009. However, only 1,346 graves have been found in the area concerned, which are overwhelmingly of LTTErs. Therefore, apart from the one hundred civilians who were shot at and killed by the LTTE itself, where is the proof that any civilians perished at the hands of the Sri Lanka Army? The overwhelming conclusion from the evidence above is that almost all those who perished until the 18th May 2009 at the hands of the Sri Lanka Army were LTTE terrorists.

In the secret defence reports the US, UK have produced suggesting that in the case of the UK, seven thousand civilians perishing and in the case of the US, five thousand persons perishing of which 25% were LTTE terrorists (all in a time period of the last five months of the conflict!), where is the proof on the ground that these bogus claims are true? The only conclusion is that this is a big lie similar to all the other big lies that the US, UK came up with over nearly three decades as far as Sri Lanka is concerned.

We suggest to the US, UK imperialists to provide Sri Lanka with the names, the identity card numbers of those they claim perished during the last five months of the conflict so that we can cross check as to their whereabouts. After all, these persons should have a name, an identity card number, a birth certificate, an address etc., surely, if they actually existed and also figure out if they were an LTTE terrorist or not. The US, UK will never ever provide such proof since their bogus claims come straight from the separatist terrorists themselves and are total lies.

One thing to note seriously unlike the US, UK imperialists totally bogus charges is that the United Nations Country Assessment Team and the UN representative in Sri Lanka, just a week after the conflict concluded, declared 7,721 persons (meaning LTTE terrorists and all others and not ‘civilians’ as even some of our own so called patriotic organizations mistakenly call this figure since persons means LTTE terrorists and all others which may have included a few civilians too) killed and 18,479 persons (again meaning LTTE terrorists and all others) injured from August 2008 until 13th May 2009. However, we think that the UN had no time to investigate anything just after the conflict concluded and extracted this figure from Tamilnet, the mouthpiece of the LTTE, since they had no other sources to extract their information from, as far as what happened on the LTTE’s side is concerned. We think this information was extracted from Tamilnet since Tamilnet also had very similar figures in its reports at that time. Therefore these figures are totally unreliable too and almost certainly untrue. What can be estimated is that from August 2006 until May 2009, over 6,600 Sri Lanka Tri Forces members perished and therefore it can be estimated that a similar number of LTTE terrorists also perished from August 2006 until May 2009.

It should be noted that when the ICRC evacuated any patients from Puthamathalan from the 10th of February 2009 until the 12th of May 2009, they were brought by ferry by sea from Puthamathalan to Pulmuddai where there was a base hospital. At Pulmuddai were Indian medical teams as well as Sri Lankan medical teams ready to treat any patients of any illnesses or LTTE terrorists of any conflict related injuries. They could then easily access the main hospital in the entire province which was at Trincomalee and even Colombo by air. Food and medicine too were regularly shipped by the ICRC by use of the ferry into the area concerned, for use by civilians. Once the conflict was over, over 300,000 civilians left the area concerned and were held in IDP camps by the Sri Lankan Government. At the conclusion of the conflict, over 11,300 LTTE terrorists surrendered too. All these persons were given medical examinations by Indian medical teams at the IDP camps, without exception. In fact, after about one month, the Indian medical team stated, as we read in newspaper reports at the time, that they have examined all the over 300,000 civilians and that they have nothing more to do and so they left after a successful task completed back to India.

One thing to note is that in spite of the LTTE terrorists preventing them doing so, the safe zone enabled a large number of civilians to escape the LTTE terrorists in April, when the earthen berm confining the civilians who were now the LTTE’s captives was breached by the army at a certain point while loosing many of its own soldiers circa 20th to the 21st of April, 2009. However, a segment of persons, mostly loyal LTTE cadres and a segment of civilians moved to the Southern segment of the safe zone.

During the last few months of the conflict, ITN and Rupavahini journalists were embedded with the Sri Lanka Army. There were also The Hindu correspondents, Kanchan Prasad and Muralidar Reddy. Contrary to claims that there were no witnesses to events that took place, several journalists, e.g. Kanchan Prasad and Muralidhar Reddy from The Hindu, and reporters from Doordarshan TV of India were embedded with the 58th Brigade on the Sri Lanka army’s side. David Gray, a Reuters correspondent, had also been touring the battlefield for a month in April, 2009, and clearly states that the soldiers were feeding those civilians that escaped etc., and no mention of any ‘indiscriminate attacks’. Reddy indicates having access to the internet (and being aware of allegations of civilian casualties that were being made at the time), they would have acted and reported any such incidents if they ever took place, which they did not, of course. Sri Lankan academics (e.g. Dr.Tammita-Delgoda, a historian at the Kadirgamar Institute) and other local journalists were also embedded with the Sri Lanka army. There were approximately 535 NGO workers who were with the LTTE terrorists, and all of them returned unharmed at the end of the conflict!

When observing the food distribution etc. the ICRC was present throughout the conflict, and suspended operations only on the 12th of May 2009, since all the civilians had successfully escaped the LTTE entrapment by that time. The government had issued the ICRC 104,765 metric tons of food and medicine to be taken to the conflict zone. There were also the UN/WFP convoys providing food and medicine, and the Darusman Report mentions 7,435 metric tons of food being delivered over five months, but omits the 104,765 tons delivered by the ICRC. A measure of food needs accepted by the UN can be obtained from the UN-run Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps in Northern Kenya: they shelter approximately 535,000 refugees, and were supplied 10,000 metric tons/month of food by the UN/WFP. This was prior to a 20% cut in November, 2013. This suggests that the over 300,000 hostage population held by the LTTE would need 5,610 tons/month, or about 28,050 tons for five months. Hence, using typical UN/WFP food-supply rates, it is clear that roughly four times the needed amount of supplies was provided by the Sri Lankan Government via the ICRC and the UN/WFP combined.

If the OHCHR or the US, UK, EU, Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden etc. want to know what really happened, why not inquire from the Sri Lanka Armed Forces themselves? They can talk to the ITN, Rupavahini journalists, The Hindu journalists Kanchan Prasad and Muralidar Reddy. They can talk to the Reuters journalist David Gray. They can talk to the Doordharshan TV of India’s journalists who were embedded with the 58th brigade of the Sri Lanka Army. They can talk to the Sri Lankan academics (e.g. Dr.Tammita-Delgoda, a historian at the Kadirgamar Institute) and other local journalists who were embedded with the Sri Lanka army. They can inquire from the Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon who, after all, wrote about this in his book. Why not talk to the Indian medical teams who examined all the civilians of over 300,000, once the conflict ended and the Sri Lankan medical teams who treated patients. The OHCHR or the US, UK, EU, Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden etc. will not talk to the above mentioned persons since this is not about seeking the truth but a witch hunt against Sri Lanka.

It should also be kept in mind that over 6,600 Sri Lankan Tri Forces i.e. the army, navy and the air force perished due to the conflict from August 2006 until May 2009. This means that at least 33,000 of our Sri Lankan Armed Forces members would have been injured during this time from August 2006 until May 2009 too. We can add a few hundred police forces members who would have perished too, to this figure. Over 626 overwhelmingly Sinhala civilians were blasted to pieces by various incidents such as bomb blasts, claymore mine blasts in buses, trains, shops, roadsides etc. all over the country by LTTE terrorists during this time (we have obtained incident by incident of individual incidents which have been lodged with the police as police incidents, as a list, and counting the victims led us to this figure). Therefore, around 7,500 overwhelmingly Sinhala persons have been massacred by the LTTE terrorists during this time. Our question is who is questioning the LTTE terrorists, those of the Tamil diaspora who supported the LTTE terrorists, the TNA etc. and other separatists, the US, UK, EU, Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden etc. who indirectly supported the LTTE terrorists, who is questioning them as to why around 7,500 overwhelmingly Sinhala persons died during this time at the hands of the LTTE terrorists? Why is the OHCHR not interested in investigating as to why over 7,500 overwhelmingly Sinhala persons perished at the hands of the LTTE terrorists from August 2006 until May 2009?

Another important fact to note is that after the conflict concluded, for months and months, we saw on ITN, Rupavahini etc. the vast amounts of weapons caches that the Sri Lanka Army found in the Northern Province which belonged to the LTTE. There is no doubt that the LTTE possessed the most advanced and the most sophisticated weapons in vast quantities, either equivalent to in sophistication or superior to and in quantities equivalent to or greater than the Sri Lankan Tri Forces themselves. In effect, the LTTE possessed sufficient weapons to blow up the whole of Sri Lanka three times over, if necessary! Our question is, why is the OHCHR or the US, UK, EU, Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden etc. not paying any attention to the fact that the LTTE was a well armed terrorist group and the Sri Lankan Tri Forces engaged with such a well armed terrorist group and not normal Tamil civilians as they seem to call the LTTE terrorists.

Our fear is that if the Sri Lankan Government accepts the secret defence reports which include totally bogus civilian casualty figures produced by the US, UK imperialists (with no proof whatsoever to prove such bogus charges), our Sri Lankan Armed Forces will be in deep trouble. One more thing we need to point out is that countries such as the US, UK, who have routinely lied about Sri Lanka at every stage by use of big lies such as forty thousand civilians perishing with no proof whatsoever to prove such a big lie and then a second big lie of twenty thousand civilians perishing again with no proof whatsoever to prove that big lie too, are we stupid enough to accept their latest big lie of seven thousand civilians perishing or five thousand persons perishing of which 25% were LTTE terrorists (all in a time period of the last five months of the conflict!), again with no proof whatsoever? If so, we Sri Lankans must be the stupidest people on earth. We should instead categorically reject outright any secret defence reports produced by our enemies, the US, UK imperialists. Our Sri Lankan Armed Forces should only accept facts that can be proven by evidence on the ground and certainly not any fabrications by any quarter whatsoever.

We note, however, that Lord Naseby who obtained these reports using the Freedom of Information Act of the UK, is a good hearted person who has helped Sri Lanka (an unfortunate victim of imperialists) at all times. However, all he did was obtain these secret defence reports. It is up to our Sri Lanka Armed Forces, The Ministry of Defence and the Sri Lankan Government to verify if these secret defence reports are true or not and categorically reject them outright as bogus lies since there is no proof whatsoever to prove these bogus lies. Our own Ministry of Defence, our own Sri Lanka Armed Forces and the Sri Lankan Government have all the information at their disposal to prove that these are all bogus lies. If they are scared of the US, UK imperialists, it is then wise to remain silent. Our own so called patriotic organisations and the Sri Lankan media (if they really want to help our Sri Lankan Armed Forces) should stop calling the Sri Lankan Government to accept totally bogus secret defence reports written by our enemies the US, UK since they will only place our Sri Lankan Army in deep trouble.

However, we urge the Sri Lankan Government to categorically withdraw from being the co-sponsor of the UNHRC resolution since the other co-sponsors i.e. the US, UK imperialists are actually our enemies who have lied about Sri Lanka for nearly three decades, who have placed Sri Lanka in deep trouble by concocting up total lies about civilians casualty figures again and again and have been found out. The US, UK etc. have indirectly supported the LTTE terrorists throughout the nearly three decades of conflict and the their ulterior motive is to partition Sri Lanka via an amendment to the constitution and they are trying to scare Sri Lanka into passing such an amendment by use of totally bogus war crimes charges.

The US has, at every turn, been against Sri Lanka from the very beginning. They have brought resolutions against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC in 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987 etc. etc. and once the conflict ended since 2009, every year until 2015 when the stupid Sri Lankan Government actually co-sponsored our enemy, US, UK imperialists resolution at the UNHRC. The US, UK, EU, Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden etc. are in fact the indirect force behind the LTTE terrorists. Their NGOs routinely support the LTTE terrorists claims. In fact all Western NGOs are, in fact, the long arm of the CIA and the MI5. The Western media are also an indirect part of the CIA and the MI5. The US, UK, EU, Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden etc. want to partition Sri Lanka and create an Eelam so that they can then extract all the resources of the area cheaply and especially for the US to install their military bases at Trincomalee. Trincomalee is the second largest natural harbour in the world and has a submarine canyon where submarines cannot be detected by use of sonar etc. The North and the East consist of over one third of our land area and over two thirds of our coastline. The North and the East consist of over half our EEZ or exclusive economic zone (which is the vast marine area around Sri Lanka which belongs to Sri Lanka) and which is twenty three times the size of Sri Lanka itself. Offshore of the Mannar and the Cauvery basins and offshore of the North East coast are oil and gas resources. The North contains mineral sands such as illmenite. Vast agricultural areas exist in the North and the East, especially rice growing areas. There are many irrigation reservoirs present in the North and the East (all built by our Sinhala kings). There is a vast marine fisheries present in the oceans around Sri Lanka. This is what the US, UK, EU, Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden etc. are after. In order to bring on a federal constitution and partition Sri Lanka, they are trying to scare Sri Lanka by use of bogus war crimes charges so that Sri Lanka will bring on a new constitution which is in fact a federal constitution, which, in effect, will partition the country as the US, UK, EU, Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden etc. wants.

It may even be that bogus war crimes charges are being used to scare Sri Lanka to bring on an amendment to the constitution only, effectively handing over of as much of the governor’s executive powers to the chief minister, making the president’s executive powers to take over a provincial council instantly if it acts out of line, a long drawn out and difficult process, streamlining or handing over of the concurrent list’s powers such as education, higher education, agriculture, irrigation, water, energy, police, land, fiscal, health, archaeology, administration, in effect thirty six powers to the provincial councils, the merger of the North and the East, two disparate provinces which have never ever in the entire history of Sri Lanka ever been one entity, provision of sovereignty to the provincial councils since as at present, sovereignty lies only with the president and the parliament. If sovereignty is provided to the provincial councils, they can hold a referendum and declare a separate state. To pass such an amendment, there is only a need for a two thirds vote in parliament and there is no need to go for an island wide referendum. If even the above mentioned amendments are carried out by use of an amendment to the constitution, there is no doubt that an Eelam will be created.

There is little doubt, taking into consideration the targeted nations of the US, UK imperialists, that the UN is being used by the West to carry out an imperialistically oriented invasion drive or an imperialistically driven inquisition directed at Third World nations, in particular the resource rich poorest nations of the world. It is then up to these poorest nations to decide whether they want to serve as servants of these inquisitors or help unite the nations of the Third World to build a formidable force against the rising imperialism of the imperial West which uses numerous international apparatus to keep the world’s public in check while they murder and plunder with impunity. The build up to and the manner in which Sri Lanka is being treated, despite freeing over 300,000 civilians whilst providing a safe nation for 21 million people to live in, seems not to hold any importance to those drafting resolutions and they forget their silence for over 26 years when the LTTE terrorists massacred with impunity and are now making a hypocrisy of themselves investigating what may or may not have happened during the last five months of a long drawn out conflict with ulterior motives in mind.

Kind regards,

Chairman,

Sri Lankan Solidarity Movement

translated by : A.A.M.NIZAM – MATARA

This is the translation of an article by Theja Godakanda Aratchi published in the Lankaweb.com on 18^th December, 2017.  

Our elders used to predict about the emerging rain season from the croaks of the frogs that filled the ears.  This country’s political land was under a severe drought for nearly three years and owing to the local government election rain that is due to fall soon the ears of us, the general public are being thundered with the croaks of the political frogs.  But before the croaks of these bipeds what focussed the attention of the people were their jumps.  Especially it is significant about those who were in the joint opposition and jumped to President Maithripala Sirisena fold and those who have decided to jump.  Although others say that they will jump now, jump soon they are very strategic.  They are on the watch out of the colour and the quantity of the rain.  As there is an anecdote saying think before you jump” one cannot dispute that also.  The President is keeping the net of ‘ministerial portfolio’ to net the frogs jumping towards him. There is no need to say about the attractive things within such a net.  This is the best example to counter the saying that there was a real change after 2015.

These people may have made an assessment of the prevailing situation of the government.  Although a group including Dallas Alahaapperuma several months ago said about a group planning to join the joint opposition from the government side and the government will be toppled within a few days such a thing did not happen.  The Prime Minister stated clearly that if the UPFA group leaves the government he would form a government with the TNA.  Although he TNA is the official opposition, they function as a part of the government.  It is certain that other minority party groups also will join them.  Most of the responsible people in the government do not have a concern to think about the future of Sri Lanka because they do not have princes to crown after them even for devouring everything. Others also after earning as much as possible could send their children to a foreign country and die comfortably.  None of these people think about the 20.8 million people of this country. Therefore it is not a concern for them if anyone made somersaults or devoured the country by making it into many pieces after them.  Especially, handing over the future of Sri Lanka to the United National Party which destroyed in the 1980 decade more than 60,000 of the future youth generation which had at least some political vision and was like the backbone of this country and for a combine with the Northern politicians who white washed the terrorists who killed and destroyed the erudite and intelligent politicians of Sri Lanka is extremely dangerous.   Therefore, it is pertinent to think a little about the attempt of toppling the government. On the other hand people also should think about the policy of partitioning this country and selling these assets to foreigners.  It should be the people who must think about this because the majority of our politicians and our so-called international friends have no concern at all about Sri Lanka’s future. Although the contemporary Sri Lanka is referred to as a Democratic Socialist Republic there is neither Democracy nor Socialism in this country.   Even a small child of a non partisan parents without any party colour allegiance will vouch that the objective of those who jump from party to party in the name of people’s welfare and those get Ministerial portfolios to suit them are only concerned about their welfare and their sustenance.  Therefore the responsibility of lighting the yellow colour at this junction which falls into the government’s path and obstructing that haughty drive rests in the hands of the people.

When all these things are arranged with each other it cannot be left aside various kinds of jumps that come into the mind.  It is very rare to find in the present parliament who has not made such jumps.  These jumps did not start recently and sometimes there were no justifiable reasons also for such jumps.  Vijayaananda of Galle and Ronnie de Mel of Matara are such persons. When we were schooling it is without the knowledge of the depth of these somersaults we used to call Ronnie de Mel Panee the Pil”.

The present Minister of Finance and Media Mangala Samaraweera and his father Mahanaamaa Samaraweera are such persons.  Today the Rajapaksas are like poisonous leaves (Andu Kola) for Mangala Cobra.  It was saying to protect 6.2 Million mandate given by the people Mangala, Gamini Viyangoda and a gang held a demonstration in Matara on 25^th November. It is something that Mangala should ask himself to whom it is being said and why he had to stand in front of the Matara sacred Bodhiya holding placards. And the other thing it was seen as a croak of premonition of the local government election rain that was to be announced on 27^th November and about the somersaults that are to be started within a few days.  People’s mandate is not something that cannot by snatched away or that can be kept under lock and key. If the promises made to the people   in obtaining that 6.2 million mandate have been fulfilled those who hold state power need not stand under the hot sun on street corners. It becomes a question to ask whether the voters are a herd of bulls that can be handled by everyone as per their needs.  But there is also a group that goes on the way they are being led by their master with a stick in his hand as well.  The best example in this regard got imbedded in my heart also centres Mangala Samaraweera.

In 1987 the young Mangala returned from London and came to reside in the 4^th Cross road of Walpola in the Matara town in the house opposite to my house.  Prior to that that house was the UNP office from 1977 and it was kept closed for some time.  Then the UNP MP for Matara was S.K.Piyadasa who was Mangala’s uncle (Mother’s sister’s husband). I have heard that earlier it was the office of Mahanama Samaraweera.  I was a student during the time of the 1977 election. But we had the quandary about this party office.  Girly Akka who was resident in the house behind our house was a staunch UNPer.  There was a big commotion one evening when a party meeting was held at the UNP party office.  That was for election of office bearers of the District Central Committee.  We clearly heard the proceedings of that meeting.  The voice of Girly Akka’s protest for not offering her a position clearly ringed in our ears.  She asked Mr. Piyadasa, Do you remember we were in the UNP when you all were in the Communist Party”. It was clear that she made this reference to remind about Mangala’s father Mahanama Samaraweera’s political activities in the Communist Party.  It was later I comprehended that one of the group involved in this dispute belonged to those who claim that they are green even if they were cut and the other group belonged to the herd that goes on the way they are being led by their master. (In Matara it is common that staunch UNPers say that they are green even if they were cut implying that even their blood is green – translator’s addition). Those who held the demonstration in front of the Matara sacred Bodhiya on November 25^th had no necessity about those who are outside these two groups. This is the calamity of politics in our country.  As long as these two groups exist we cannot expect a positive political future in our country.

I still remember my mother laughing at when Mangala came to Matara as the SLFP President of the Matara electorate in 1987 and occupied that house and it became the SLFP office saying that naming of the houses also changes in accordance with people’s politics.

When he submitted nomination for the Parlismentary election of the Matra district the whole country was inflamed with the youth uprising of the Patriotic People’s movement.  It was just like the riddle of fire above and fire underneath. In that era in which the youth uprising gathered momentum as an alternative to UNP governments acute dictatorial attitude and inhuman measures taken by the government to suppress the youth uprising the  Pavana” presentation of Nanda Malini which had been created to espouse feelings of the reality in the hearts and minds of the people became a great attraction n all Universities.  A set of cassettes of this presentation had been issued and there was a great demand for them.  Mangala had also purchased these cassettes. At that time it was the Pavana cassettes that Mangala used at his propaganda meetings.  I still remember Mangala on top of his voice asking one of his acolyte Kalu Mahattaya only Pavana okay, only Pavana”.  It is how he addressed the feelings of the people then before making a great leap to the UNP. When we look at these things there had been only misleading in these activities.  The future activities of these misleadings were establishment of the Mothers’ Front of Missing Persons in 1990 and making a leading role in digging mass graves in 1994.

Against whom it is?.  Mahinda Rajapaksa who sat in the chairs in the portico of Matara SLFP  office and held discussions with Mangala was not a stranger to that house.  Those days as Mahinda was appearing for human rights issues of the youth who smashed the suppression of the government Mangala may have got inspirational ideas from Mahinda.

At that time a bomb attack was carried out at Mangala’s Party Office in the mid night.  On hearing this news lot of people gathered at his party office next morning to find out what happened.  Among them was one of his relations.  Mangala asked from him in a loud voice  After being with Dayananda and his people are you coming now to show your face and see what has happened?”  The house of Dayananda Wickremasinghe who was the then MP for Akuressa was situated a few yards away from Mangala’s house.  Althugh Mangala took it on a personal basis,  his relation was in fact a UNPer but not a person actively involved in politics. These immature qualities that existed with him then seem to exist still and this was displayed in the November 25^th demonstration as well.  That allegation against Dayananda on hurling a bomb could have been true also but he did not take any action to prove it.  He did not do anything other than making allegations.  In that election as the JVP has declared their jungle Law of Death for those who vote” majority of the people did not cast their vote and the government and opposition candidates with armed guards impersonated as much as possible. It is true in respect of Mangala as well. As there was no much difference among the politicians of the two groups holding power in the society which was in an uncertain status in the face of the Deshapremi Janatha Viyaapaaraya (DJV).

The subject about the Leaps and when it is turned towards Mangala he has an inherited talent about Leaps.  The mistake is making isuse of people’s feelings for his Leaps. He talks about the number of telephone calls taken by Mrs. Shraanthi Rajapaksa on the day of Thajudeen’s death not on a professional basis but Just as whatever that came to his mouth.  In it there is also an attempt to justify the calls received by Ravi Karunanayake from Arjuna Aoysius.  If it can be balanced saying that for this” what is the meaning of the 6.2Million mandate?

There are many more things that can be balanced in such manner.  His father named the bridge across the Nilwala river as the Mahanama Bridge” and Mangala got this bridge renovated and instead of the old plaque fixed a new very expensive plaque and baptised it as Mahanama Bridge” When he was the Minister of Housing and Public Utility under Chandrika Kumaratunga government his mother Mrs. Khema Samaraweera due to a fall got her spine fractured. To facilitate his mother to climb up and come down he got an electric lift fixed in his official residence at a cost of over Rs. 25 million. When the media enquired about it he said that the lift will become useful to anyone  This is how he performed maternal worship,  His Credit Card matters can also be not forgotten by the people.  When speaking about D.ARajapaksa foundation what the people should understand is that there is lime in  everyone’s lime holders.  Therefore these Leaps do not change to whichever side they Leap.

When Mr. Mahinda Rajaoaksa was the President the Temple Trees it was referred to as the Pinnawala.  At that time most of the UNPers who were suffering under the bitter taste of continuous defeats in order to get their ministerial expectations fulfilled and having no other alternative visited the Temple Trees frequenty and another group revolted within the party itself against the leadership of Ranil Wickremasinghe. Mangala who had formed a new party in the name of SLFP (People’s Front) by 2010 joining with the UNP branding Sarath Fonsea (who was condemned by him as fit only to lead the SaLvation Army) as a war hero and supported him in the 2010 Presidential Election.  After a few days he permanently joined the UNP. In 2013 he used his stooges and attacked a foot walk with cinnamon poles in Matara which was being held against Ranil Wickremsinghe’s leadership in the UNP and it was Mangala who forced abandon this foot walk meant to go to Colobo.  As it is being said today if they can form a government with the cooperation of minority parties then why Ranil Wiciremasinghe did not come forward for the presidential election of 2015 instead of Sirisena?  Those days based on the number of MPs they had their only objective was to weaken the SLFP.  Accordingly at the time of 2015 August election period John Aeratunge;s the Police and the governed are ours theory may have been in operation clandestinely. The group that helped in this effort most was those who were with Mahinda until January 8^th and jumped to Sirisena’s fold by January 10^th.  The most hilarious thing was Nishantha  Muthuhettigama who destroyed a  stage erected for Sirisena in Baddegama and got a case filed against him by the Police are appearing for that case as a Deputy Minister of the government.

Therefore, people should not get upset about these jumps, leaps and somersaults and about those who are involved in these acts. For politicians it creates a fear because it shatters their political foundation. The best thing to do at a time when an election approaches is not to bother about these jumps, leaps and somersaults and think independently about your self protection.

 

2018 පළාත් පාලන මැතිවරණවේ ඡන්ද පූර්ව ප්‍රතිඵල 

යහපාලනය පක්ෂග්‍රාහිකයින්ගේ බලාපොරොත්තුව

එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂය  UNP	39.7
ශ්‍රී ලංකා පොදුජන පෙරමුණ SLPP	38.4
ශ්‍රී ලංකා නිදහස් පක්ෂය   SLFP	13.2
ජනතා විමුක්ති පෙරමුණ  JVP	4.2
ඉලංකෙයි තමිල් අරසු කච්චි ITAK	3.1
වෙනත් Other	1.4
	100

ලංකාවෙබ් අනාවැකිය

එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂය  UNP	37.1
ශ්‍රී ලංකා පොදුජන පෙරමුණ SLPP	42.1
ශ්‍රී ලංකා නිදහස් පක්ෂය   SLFP	12.8
ජනතා විමුක්ති පෙරමුණ  JVP	3.7
ඉලංකෙයි තමිල් අරසු කච්චි ITAK	3.1
වෙනත් Other	1.2
	100

ගාල්ලේගේ පුන්යවර්ධන

ජනාධිපති මෛත්‍රිපාල සිරිසේන මැතිතුමා,
ජනාධිපති ලේකම් කාර්‍යාලය,
කොළඹ 1.

ජනාධිපතිතුමනි,

එදා මෙදා මහජන මුදල් හොරකම් කළ පාර්ලිමේන්තු හොරුන්ට දඬුවම් කර, හොරකම් කළ මුදල් අයකරගන්නා තුරු මැතිවරණය පැවැත්වීම නතර කරන්න.

පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන්ගේ ඉල්ලීම් උද්ඝෝෂණ, නඩු කටයුතු ආදී වු විවිධාකාරයේ බලපෑම්වල එල්ලී ඉක්මණින් පලාත් පාලන මැතිවරණය පැවැත්වීමට ආණ්ඩුව සියලු කටයුතු සූදානම් කරමින් සිටී. ඒ අතර ඔවුන්ද ඔවුන්ගේ  ඇම්බැට්ටයන්ද මහත් උද්යෝගයෙන් යුතුව  මැතිවරණ ප්‍රචාරක කටයුතු කරමින් මුළු රටේම අවධානය මැතිවරණය දෙසට යොමු කරනු දක්නට ඇත.

ඒ සමඟ පසුගිය මාස කීපය පුරාවට රටේ හැම දෙනාගේම කතා බහට ලක්වූ මහා බැංකු මකොල්ලය ඇතුලු එදා මෙදා පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන් විසින් කරන ලද මහා පරිමාණ ජාතික මංකොල්ලකෑම් සියල්ල යටගොස් ඇත. පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන් කුමන විදියට හිතුවත් සමාන්‍ය ජනතාව හිතන විදියට නම් එය එසේ සිදුවිය නොහැක්කකි. මන්ද ඒවා ඒ තරම් අති විශාල, දැවැන්ත මහා මංකොල්ලකෑම් නිසාය. නමුත් එය එසේ සිදුවී ඇත. ඇත්ත වශයෙන් පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන්ට වුවමනා වී තිබුනේ එයයි. පළාත් පාලන මැතිවරණයකට කෑ ගැහුව්වේ ඒ සදහාය. දන්නා කියන පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන්ගෙන් පෞද්ගලිකව ඒ පිළිබඳ විමසූ විට ඔවුන් කියන්නේ ඒ  පිළිබඳ ජනතාව කළබල විය යුතු නැති බවයි. පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන්ගේ හැටි එහෙම තමයි. පාර්ලිමේන්තුව කියන්නේත්, පාර්ලිමේන්තු ක්‍රමය කියන්නේත් ඒක බවයි. අවුරුදු හැත්තෑවක් වෙලත් ඒක තවම තේරුම් ගෙන නොතිබීම ගැන ඇත්ත වශයෙන් ඔවුන් සතුටු වන බවයි. ඇත්ත තමයි,  දැන් කරන්නේ මැතිවරණ කටයුතු නිසා ඒ හොරකම් ගැන සෙවීම කල් දැමූ බව ජනතාවට හඟවා ඉන් පසුව වෙනත් මොනවා හරි දේශපාලන උද්ඝෝෂණ කිරීම් මගින් ඒවා තවදුරටත් යටපත් කොට දමා අන්තිමේදී ඒවා ජනතාවට මුලුමනින්ම අමතක කර දැමීමයි. මේ පළාත් පාලන  මැතිවරණයේදී ජනතාව සැළකිල්ලට ගත යුත්තේ යූඇන්පී, ශ්‍රී ලංකා ආණ්ඩුවට පක්‍ෂව ඡන්දය දෙනවාද නැත්නම් ඊට විරුද්ධව ඡන්දය දෙනවාද යන කාරණය පමණක් බව, තවත් එක් ප්‍රධාන පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයෙකු විසින් කියා සිටීමෙන්ද තහවුරු වන්නේ පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන්ගේ සැබෑ බලාපොරොත්තුව මැතිවරණ ඝෝෂාව මගින් හොරකම් යටපත් කිරීම බවයි.

ආණ්ඩුව පක්‍ෂව ඡන්දය දුන්නත්, ඊට විරුද්ධව ජනතාව ඡන්දය දුන්නත්, කවුරුන් දිනුවත් පැරදුනත් මැතිවරණය මගින් ජනතාව තුල ඇති කරනු ලබන ආණ්ඩු විරෝධී ජනමතය විශාල පිම්මකින් ඉදිරියට පනිනු ඇතැයි පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන් බලාපොරොත්තු වේ, එමගින් පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන් විසින් කරන ලද සියලු මංකොල්ලකෑම් ජනතාවට අමතක  වී ගොස් ආණ්ඩුව පරාජය කිරීම ජනතාවගේ  එකම අධිෂ්ඨානය බව ජනගත කිරීමට ඔවුන්ට  හැකි වනු ඇත. ඒ අතර ආණ්ඩුව පරාජය කර දැමීමෙන්, පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන් විසින් කරන ලද සියලු හොරකම්, මංකොල්ලකෑම් වලට නිසි දඩුවම දුන්නා යැයි ජනතාව අන්තිමේදී සතුටුවනු ඇත. පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන්ද ඉමහත් සතුටට පත්වනු ඇත.

මේ ආකාරයට කල්පනා කර බලන විට පසුගිය අවුරුදු හැත්තෑව තුල පවත්වන ලද සියලු මැතිවරණවලින් සිදුවී ඇත්තේ, ජාතික ධනය හොරකම් කළ, මංකොල්ල කෑ පිරිස වෙනුවට වෙනත් පිසකට ඒ සඳහා අවස්ථාව ලබාදීමයි, එසේ නැත්නම් ඒ පිරිසටම නැවතත් ඒ සඳහාම අවස්ථාව දීමයි, ඇත්ත වශයෙන්ම එය එසේම බව දැනට පවත්වන්න  සූදානම් කර ඇති පළාත් පාලන මැතිවරණයෙන් සක් සුදක් සේ පැහැදිලි වී ඇත.මේක තමයි පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන්ගේ සෙල්ලම.ජනතාව ඒ බව තේරුම් ගෙන ඇත. ඒ සෙල්ලමට තවදුරටත් ඉඩදීමට ජනතාව සූදානම් නැත.

පවත්වන්නට යන මේ පළාත් පාලන මැතිවරණයට රුපියල් කෝටි 400 ක් වියදම් වන බව ජන මාධ්‍යයෙන් පැවසින. ඒ මහජන මුදල්ය. ඒ මහජන මුදල් වැය කරන්නේ, රටේ මහජන ධනය කොල්ලකෑම් සඳහා පිරිසක් පත් කරගැනීමටයි. ඒ බව දැන් හොඳටම පැහැදිලි වී ඇත. මැතිවරණවලින් කෙරෙන්නේ ඒ බව පසුගිය අඩසිය වසක කාලය තුල පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන් විසින් ඔවුන්ගේ ක්‍රියා කලාපයෙන් නැවත නැවතත් පෙන්නා දී ඇත. එකල ඒවා ජනතාවට එතරම් දැනුනේ නැත්නම්, පසුගියදා ක්‍රියාත්මක වූ බැඳුම්කර පිළිබඳ ජනාධිපති කොමිසමෙන් එය ජනතාවගේ ඇහේ උලා ඇඟේ ගසා පෙන්නා දී ඇත. ජනාධිපතිතුමා විසින් ප්‍රසිද්ධියේ මහත් උද්වේගයෙන් යුතුව ප්‍රකාශ කළේ මැතිවරණයෙන් මාස තුනක් යන්නටත් ඉස්ස්සරවෙලා මේ වැඩේ කළානේ, යනුවෙනි. බැඳුම්කර කොමිසමෙන් ජනතාවගේ ඇඟේ උලා පෙන්නුම් කර දුන් තවත් කාරණයක් වන්නේ කිසිම ලැජ්ජාවක් බියක් හිරිකිතයක් නැතිව මේ මහා බැංකු මංකොල්ලයට පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන් විශාල පිරිසක් කෙළින්ම හෝ වක්‍රාකාරයෙන් සම්බන්ධ වී ඇති බවයි. ඊටත් වඩා බරපතළ ජනතා කෝපය පුපුරා යන කාරණය වන්නේ මහා දවල් කරන ලද මේ මහා මහජන මුදල් මංකොල්ලයට කෙලින්ම හවුල්වී ඇති අගමැති ඇතුලු පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන්, ඉන් පීඩාවට පත් වූ මහජනයාගේම මුදල්වලින් පොලිස් ආරක්‍ෂාව ලබා ගනිමින්, මහජන මුදලින් අධි සුඛෝපභෝගී වෙඩි නොවදින යාන වාහන වලින් පැමිණ මහජන මුලින්ම නඩත්තු කරන වට භටයන්ගෙන් වටවී ජනතාවට ජනතාවගේ මලපනින කතා කීමයි.

පසුගිය කාලයේ රාජපක්‍ෂ රෙජීමය විසින්, පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන් විසින් මහජන මුදල් විශාල වශයෙන් හොරකම් කර ඇති නිසා, සංවර්ධන කටයුතු කිසිවක් කරන්නට බැරි බවත්, ඒ සඳහා මුදල් මහජනයාගෙන් ගතයුතු බවත් කියා සිටීමයි. බදු මුදල් මගින් මහින්ද රෙජීමය හොරකම් කල මුදල් ලබා ගතයුතු යැයි හරියට ජනතාව වැරදිකරුවන් ලෙස සළකා කරන මේ සාහසික කතා ජනතාව තවදුරටත් ඉවසා සිටීද? මෙවැනි ප්‍රකෝපකාරී කතා කියා සිටීමට  නොපැකිලිම තරම් තවත් සාහසික තක්කඩිකමක් තවත් ඇද්ද? පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාර මොවුන්ගේ මෙම ජනතා ද්‍රෝහී තක්කඩිකම්වල තරම කෙතරම් දැයි පාර්ලිමේන්තුවේ කතානායක කරු ජයසුරිය මහතා විසින්ද අපුරුවට කියා ඇත්තේ මෙසේය. අද ඇතැම් පාර්ලිමේන්තු මංත්‍රීවරුන්ගේ ළමයින් තමන්ගේ පියා මංත්‍රීවරයෙක් බව කියන්න කැමති නැහැ, ලැජ්ජයි. මොවුන් මහ තක්කඩි රැළක්” යනුවෙනි. ඒ අතර තවත් මංත්‍රීවරයෙක් මංත්‍රීවරුන්ගේ මේ නින්දිත තත්වය පිළිබඳ කොතරම් කළකිරීමට පත්ව ඇත්දැයි පෙනුනේ, ඔහු විසින් මංත්‍රීවරුන්ගේ නමට ඉදිරියෙන් භාවිතා කරන ගරු” යන්නට, ඔවුන් නුසුදුසු බව කියා, තවදුරටත් ඔවුන් විසින් ගරු පදවී පද භාවිතා කිරීම වළකාලීමට පාර්ලිමේන්තුවට යෝජනාවක් ඉදිරිපත් කිරීම නිසාය.

පසුගිය දිනක මා මගේ හිතවත් තරුණ මංත්‍රීවරයෙකු පාර්ලිමේන්තුවේදී හමුවූ අවස්ථාවේ ඔහු මා සමඟ කී දේද, පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන්ගේ ජාතික මංකොල්ලකෑම් පිළිබඳ ඉදිරිපත් කළ හැකි තවත් එක් ප්‍රබල සාක්‍ෂියකි. ඔහු මා  පාර්ලිමේන්තුවේ මහජන ගැලරියට ඇරලීමට පෙර මගේ සාක්කුවේ තිබූ පෑන දැක ඔහු කීවේ ඔය පෑනත් ආරක්‍ෂක කුටියට ලබා දිය යුතු බවයි, මේකෙ ඉන්නෙ මහා මංකොල්ලකාරයො, උන් ඔය පෑනටත් බයයි, යනුවෙනි.

පාර්ලිමේන්තුවත් පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයනුත් පිළිබඳ අලුත්ම විග්‍රහය වන්නේ, ජාත්‍යන්තර දුෂණ විරෝධී දිනය නිමිත්තෙන් වොෂින්ටන් නුවරදී දියත් කළ වංචා කළ දේපළ ආපසු ලබා ගැනීම සඳහා වූ ගෝලීය සංසදයේ රැස්වීමට සමගාමීව ඇමැරිකානු රාජ්‍ය දෙපාර්තමේන්තුව විසින් නිකුත් කළ ප්‍රකාශයයි. එම ප්‍රකාශනයේ කියා ඇති දේ අපේ රටේ අපට තේරෙන භාෂාවෙන් කියන්නේ නම්, ඇමැරිකානු රාජ්‍ය දෙපාර්තමේන්තුව කියා ඇත්තේ මේ රටේ ඇත්තේ, අන්ත දූෂිත කුජීත පාලනයක් බවයි.

එම ප්‍රකාශය පිළිබඳ මේ රටේ විගණකාධිපති මනා විග්‍රහයක් කර ඇත. හැත්තෑ අවුරුදු පාර්ලිමේන්තු ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදයක් ගැන කතා කරන ශ්‍රී ලංකාව, පාලනයක් නැති දූෂිත රටක් ලෙස හඳුන්වනු ලැබීම ගැන මේ රටේ පාර්ලිමේන්තුව ලැජ්ජා විය යුතු බවයි. ඇත්ත වශයෙන් ඇමරිකාවේ රාජ්‍ය දෙපාර්තමේන්තුවේ මේ ප්‍රකාශය පාර්ලිමේන්තුව තිගැස්සී වෙවුලා යාමට හේතුවන දෙයකි. නමුත් මේ රටේ පාර්ලිමේන්තුවට එය ඒ හැටි

දෙයක් නොවේ. මේ රටේ කතාවක් තියනවානේ අසුචි කප්පරක් කාපු එකාට පඩයක් ගඳක්ද කියා. උගත් මැදහත් සමාජ දේශපාලන විචාරකයෙක් පසුගියදාක කීයා සිටියේ, රජයේ ඉහළම තැන් සම්බන්ධ වී කරන ලද ලෝකයේ ලොකුම හොරකම වන මේ රටේ මහ බැංකු හොරකම වන අතර, ඊට සම්බන්ද ඒ මහ තැන කිසිදු ගානක් නැතිව මේ රට නියෝජනය කරමින් ජාත්‍යන්තර රාජ්‍ය සම්මේලනවලට සහභාගී වී කතාත් පවත්වනකොට, ලෝකයා ඉදිරියේ ලැජ්ජාවට පත්වන්නේ ඒ මහතැන් නොව ඒ මහතැන්  නියෝජනය කරන රට බවයි. රටේ පාර්ලිමේන්තුව බවයි.

ඒ අතර අද මේ රටේ තවත් ප්‍රබල ඇමැතිවරයෙක් කියා ඇත්තේ පසුගිය ආණ්ඩුවේ, පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන්ගේ, දුෂණ හා නාස්තිය නිසා ඉහළ බදු අය කරන්න සිදුවී ඇති බවයි. එය ජනතාවගේ සල්ලිවලින් වට බටයන් වට කරගෙන තවත් හාරපන්සිය ගනනක් සාක්කු පිස්තෝලකාරයන් පිරිවරාගෙන බත්ගොටු යූඇන්පී කාරයන් පණහකට හැටකට අගමැතිවරයා කරන කථාවට නොදෙවෙනි කථාවකි.

දුෂණත් නාස්තියත් රාජ්‍ය දේපළ, මංකොල්ලකෑමත් කළේ පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන් නම්, ඒවා ඔවුන්ගේ අයකර ගතයුතුය. ඒ දේපලවල වටිනාකම් මුදලින් භාණ්ඩාගාරයට ලබාගත යුතුය. එසේ නැතිව මහජනයාගෙත් ඒ මුදල් බදු වශයෙන් අය කර ගැනීම කියන්නේ පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන් කළ මහා සාවද්‍ය මහා ජාතික අපරාධවලට ජනතාවට දඬුවම් කිරීමකි.

ජනාධිපතිතුමනි, පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන්ගේ මේ සෙල්ලමට තවදුරටත් කිසිසේත් ඉඩ දිය නොහැක. ඊට ජනතාව සූදානම් නැත.ඊට වහා තිත තැබිය යුතුය. ඒ සඳහා තවත් හේතු අවශ්‍ය නොවේ.පළාත් පාලන මැතිවරණය නියත වශයෙන්ම පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන්ගේ මේ මහා ජාතික හොරකම් හා අපරාධ වසා දැමීමට දරණ උත්සාහයකික් බව නැවත නැවත කියමි.

උදේට කැඳ ටිකක්වත් බොන්න හාල්පතක් නැති පවුල් කී දාහක් අවුරුදු දහස් ගනනක් තිස්සේ රටට බත සැපයූ පොළොන්නරු දිස්ත්‍රික්කයේ සිටීද? මීට කාලයකට ඉහත වගා ණය පියවාගන්න බැරිව බුරුතු පිටින් ගොවීන් වස බී මැරෙද්දී ඒ තත්වය ඇති කළ පාර්ලිමේන්තුවට විරුද්ධව, උන්ට ශාප කරමින් ඔබතුමා සමඟ පොල් ගහන්න ගිය පින්තූරයක් මීට ඉහත මා ඔබතුමාට එවා ඇත. ගොවිගම් දස දහස් ගනනකින් යුක්ත වූ ගොවි රජරට, පොළොන්නරුවේ ගොවින් අමතා පසුගියදා ඔබතුමා කීවේ, ඔබලා බඩගින්නේ තියන්න මං ඉඩ තියන්නේ නැහැ, මං කීයට හරි රටවල් පහකින් හාල් ගෙනැත් දෙනවා, යනුවෙනි. කෙතරම් ලැජ්ජා නැති කතාවක්ද?

මේ හාල් ගෙන්වීමෙන් හා බෙදාහැරීමෙන් පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන් කොපමණ ගසා කනවද? කොපමණ මංකොල්ල කනවද? ඒ විදියට මංකොල්ල කන ගමන් නේද එදා

මෙදා පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන් කොල්ල කෑ මහජන මුදල්, එවුන්ගෙන් අය කරගන්නේ නැතිව මහජනයාගෙන් බදු වැඩි කිරීමෙන් අය කරගන්න හදන්නේ. ඒ අතරේ  මහජන මුදල් කෝටි 400ක් වැයකොට පළාත් පාලන මැතිවරණ පවත්වන්නේ එදා මෙදා උන් මුන්  විසින් කරන ලද මහා මංකොල්ලකෑම් වසා ගන්නටත්, ඒ ගමන්ම තවත් ගම් මට්ටමේ හොරුන් මංකොල්ලකාරයන් පිරිසක් ඇති කරගන්නටත් නොවේ නම් වෙන මොනවටද?

එබැවින් ජනාධිපතිතුමනි, මේ පිළිබඳව සාවධානව හිතා බලන්න, වරක් මා ඔබතුමා කෘෂිකර්ම ඇමැති කාලයේ, ජාත්‍යන්තර ජාවාරම් කරුවන්ගේ ගසාකෑම් ගැන ඔබතුමාට කියා සිටි විට ඒ සඳහා ඔබතුමා දැක්වූ ප්‍රතිචාරය මට තවමත් මතකය. පොල්ගැසීමට යද්දී කී දේත් හොඳට මතකය. ඒ අනුව කල්පනා කිරීමේදී මා දැඩි ලෙස විශ්වාස කරන්නේ, ලෝක නින්දාවට පත්වී ඇති, ධර්මද්වීපයක් වූ මේ සිංහල අපේ රටට මහා හෙණපතයක් වී අති මේ දුෂ්ඨ දුර්දාන්ත පාලන ක්‍රමයට තිත තියන්න ඔබතුමාට ආත්ම ශක්තිය, ධෛර්ය හා දේශපාලනික විශ්වාසය ඇති බවයි.

එබැවින් ඒ සඳහා ගන්නා ප්‍රථම නිවැරදි, නිර්භීත පියවර විය යුත්තේ, රටවැසියන් දුකින් දුකටත්, පීඩාවෙන් පීඩාවටත් පත් කරන මේ ජනතා වංචා මැතිවරණය, වහාම නැවැත් වීමයි. පීඩාවට පත් වී ඇති ජනතාවගේත් මුදල් ගෙන ඒ මුදලින් තවත් හොරුන් පිරිසක් පත් කරන්නට තියන මේ මැතිවරණය වහාම අත් හිටු වීමයි.ඒ නිසා අඩුම වශයෙන් මහජනයාගෙන් මංකොල්ල කෑ ගසා කෑ මහා මුදල් කන්දරාව ආපසු මහා භාණ්ඩාගාරයට ගන්නා තුරුවත් මැතිවරණය කල් තැබීම ජනතා විරෝධී දූෂිත පාර්ලිමේන්තු පාලන ක්‍රමයට විරුද්ධව, කැකෑරෙමින් තිබෙන ජනතා කෝපාග්නිය සංසිඳවාලිම උදෙසා මේ අවස්ථාවේ දී ගතයුතු, ගත හැකි අතිශය ප්‍රඥාගෝචර නිර්භීත ක්‍රියාව වේ. පාර්ලිමේන්තුකාරයන් ඒ ගැන විරෝධය පාන්නේ නම්, ඔවුන් සියලුදෙනා විසින් කරන ලද ජාතික දේපල මංකොල්ල කෑම පිළිබඳව මේ රටේ  සාමාන්‍ය නීතිය පරිදි ඔවුන් සියලු දෙනාම අත් අඩංගුවට ගෙන ඔවුන් පිළිබඳ නඩු විභාගය අවසන් වන තෙක් මේ රටේ ජනාධිපති පාලනයක් ස්ථාපිත කිරීම ජාතියේ ඉමහත් සතුටට හේතුවනු ඇත. එය ජනතාවගේ අවංක අව්‍යාජ අපේක්ෂාව වේ. ඒ සදහා එඩිතරව අභිතව, අදීනව, අව්‍යාජව ක්‍රියා කළ හොත් පොළොන්නරුවේ ගොවියා පිත් මෛත්‍රීපාල සිරිසේන ජනාධිපති තුමා, පොළොන්නරුව අගනුවර වන මේ සිංහල දේශයේ දෙවෙනි මහා පැරකුම්බා වශයෙන් විරුදාවලිය ලත් ජනේශ්වර ජනාධිපති වශයෙන් ඉතිහාස ගතවනු ඇත.

ගාල්ලේගේ පුන්යවර්ධන

Dr Sarath Obeysekera

You may have read about Silredi  case where  a government high ranking officer was arrested and remanded for alleged  misusing public .

Politicians always go scot free and public officers are subjected to persecution.

It looks that there are two yard sticks to measure the violation of law and order .

Last week I attended Officials-Committee for Economic  Development ( OCEM) consist of ex bureaucrats who are appointed as consultants to guide public officials to take decisions in matters related to economic development .

I requested the committee to advise a chairman of a corporation to take  a certain action as directed by the Board and he was willing to do so  and yet Committee was of the opinion that they may have to cover themselves by going to cabinet .

But the fear psychosis among the public officials above him have vehemently protested  against the action citing past cases  .They fear Auditor General.CIABOS .CID for future punitive actions .

Committee could only advise but they cannot give instructions as they are all consultants but not senior public officers.I was also told that committee cannot even issue MOM to reflect the decisions taken as they are just consultants

It is obvious that some ministers have defied the rulings of OCEM?

I came out of the committee meeting   disgusted.

Sometime back I attended a similar meeting in the Parliament.

It was CCEM (Cabinet Committee for  Economic Development  ) chaired by the Prime Minister In a similar case of an investment .PM instructed a minister to take action and allow an investment ..Even after issuing the Minutes of Meeting with instructions, subject minister rejected the decision claiming who are they to instruct me ? I am appointed by the President !

One minister openly named chairman ‘s of a committee and said they have no right to tell him  what to do.

Sri Lanka  needs a law which will protect and indemnify public officers in taking a development related bona fide action on the basis of facts made available to him .Such an indemnity- law was included in the proposed act for Strategic Development act .Law makers were crying foul and suppressed such act.

Yahaplanaya wants good governance and country free of corruption. And yet rulers want accelerated development.

How can the government achieve such growth when decisions makers are dragged by the law enforcement .?

No development can take place unless state passes a law to Indemnify Public Officers who can take an action in good faith .

Any claim of violating the establishment code or a complain may be taken up at a special arbitration body ( which may be inacted by An Act of Parliament ) who should make a final decision which cannot be contested at a court of law .

Then Public officers can take action for a steady development drive .

Dr Sarath Obeysekera

Rainforest Protectors of Sri Lanka, Centre for Environmental Justice, Wildlife and Nature Protection Society, FEO Sri Lanka

Environment Organizations in Sri Lanka have great concern about the proposal to build two new coal power plants in Sampur and Norochcholai despite their rejection by the PUCSL.

We note inherent issues and contradictions in the recent joint cabinet paper (63/2017/PE) outlining the diversification of the energy mix in Sri Lanka’s long-term generation plan (LTGP).

Firstly, as per Government policy, the already approved LTGP for 2017-2038 currently in force cannot be changed until 2019; should the ministry need to introduce new proposals, it must wait until 2019 to do so, and seek public comments on all such new proposals. The public, being an energy consumer, has a right to comment on the nature of what they are supplied with for consumption; therefore, giving public opinion prior to the tabling of changes is moreover a consumer right.

Strategic diversification of Sri Lanka’s energy mix

The cabinet paper notes in its ‘Background’ section (1.0) that minimizing environmental impacts in the generation of energy is a priority for the country, and reiterates that when deciding on the generation mix, protecting the environment is of ‘utmost priority’. As environment organizations, we would like to note that this point is aligned with the assurances Sri Lanka made to the global community as party to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in April 2016, including in the country position paper that, “Sri Lanka will place her development agenda on a fossil fuel free target”.

Nevertheless, later on, the cabinet paper contradicts its previous point, when it allocates 1,200 MW of new power generation to two new proposed coal power plants, ostensibly for the purpose of strategic diversification of the energy mix in order to ensure energy security.

Environmental organizations believe that using strategic diversification as a justification for the development of coal power generation in Sri Lanka is heinously damaging to the country’s pledges to the world, and takes Sri Lanka a long step back in a world fast progressing past coal. In fact, the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which is part of the Conference of Parties, aims to grow its country membership to 50 by the next UN Climate Summit in 2018, in recognition of coal’s role as the biggest source of carbon emissions in the world.

“Clean coal” myth and the empty promise of carbon sinks

Regrettably, the said cabinet paper uses the term ‘clean coal’, a misnomer without a scientific definition. The term ‘clean coal’ implies higher technologies in coal processing that removes carbon emissions, although in reality the term is merely subterfuge created and popularized by the coal industry itself, in response to anti-coal litigation. To the best of available knowledge and scientific research, CCS and other technologies that ‘clean coal’ implies are still underdeveloped, and this seriously undermines the possibility that coal power plants in Sri Lanka will be clean. SO2, NO, Lead, Mercury and Cadmium are some of the non-carbon pollutants of coal power, and the technology for containing these is also at a nascent stage. Furthermore, highly efficient coal plants will still have higher carbon emissions than more environmentally friendly generation methods that the energy mix could include. Including new coal in our future energy mix for the sake of ‘diversification’ is unjustified and only further reinforces our climate change risks and threatens our national climate action programme.

The last point of the cabinet paper, which purports to plan carbon sequestration through the creation of new carbon-sink forests, raises grave concerns, particularly in the current atmosphere of rapid deforestation raging through Sri Lanka and the lack of enforcement of environmental laws to mitigate it.

It would require planting approximately 36,000 hectares of new forest to sequester the carbon annually emitted by the two power plants. This fact is not mentioned in the cabinet paper. The clear lack of consideration for the feasibility of such a task casts doubt on the true intentions of the cabinet paper: as to whether the ministry’s intention was to sequester carbon or to greenwash the coal power plants via an impractical promise to sequester their carbon emissions.

An intention to reclaim approximately 36,000 hectares of arable land for reforesting, if a genuine intention, should involve some thought into its location (in fact, in the recent past, the government of Sri Lanka claimed to target increasing forest cover by 3%, but in fact has lost 1% since then, according to our calculations). Moreover, a newly planted forest takes decades to mature into a carbon sink, and by that time, the world would have largely phased out coal altogether. In the interim period until the forest is ready, all carbon emissions from the two proposed coal power plants would contribute to climate change and to localized environmental damage. The cabinet paper does not touch on these problems. This solidifies our assumption that the proposal for sequestering carbon is merely a greenwash, and the so-called clean coal would not be as clean as purported.

Environmental impact

It is evident that coal power plants have wreaked havoc on the environment and the people living around them, as can be seen by the many petitions filed by affected citizens against the Norochcholai Coal Power Plant. Further, there is an ongoing court case against the Norochcholai coal power plant. Most importantly, the Central Environmental Authority has delayed issuing its environmental clearance. In addition, litigation was filed against the Sampur coal power plant in 2016, and the government decided to cancel the project due to the environmental and procedural concerns raised in this court case

Coal’s unit-cost failure

The reason for coal power plants to be excluded from the current approved Least Cost LTGP is that its unit cost fails to meet the required standard. According to data from the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) and the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL), the unit cost of the Norochcholai coal plant is Rs. 19. When environmental costs are added, it can be much higher than Rs. 20 per unit. Based on recent tenders received, the unit cost of a natural gas power plant is just Rs. 15. Therefore, it is clearly evident that coal power plants have lost their cost advantage.

Soorya Bala Sangramaya and renewables

The Cabinet paper undermines His Excellency the President’s recent initiative “Soorya Bala Sangramaya” which aims to promote non-conventional renewable energy that does not destroy our environment and sensitive eco-systems, and this is essential towards preserving and enhancing Sri Lanka’s agriculture- and tourism-based economy. This new proposal for coal power will derail the government’s policy on clean energy, which is already approved and is currently being implemented.

According to National Policy, Sri Lanka has set the goal of generating all its energy needs through renewable and local sources by 2030. In 2015, 50% of all energy was generated through renewable and local sources, and the figure was well underway to push past 60% by 2020. At such a time, this said cabinet paper proposes to backtrack these achievements. Additionally, Sri Lanka has targeted producing its own natural gas by 2020, enabling it to achieve its energy needs without the need for imported coal.

Sri Lanka’s goal of generating all its energy via renewable and local sources by 2030 is already in progress and is an achievable goal. Therefore, pushing the goal a further 20 years into 2050 is pushing the country and its economy in reverse.

Sri Lanka has potential to generate 2,000 MW via renewable energy such as wind, dendro power and unlimited solar power. However, the CEB has blocked signing small power purchase agreements during the past 18 months. Further, the Sustainable Energy Authority has been unable to approve (due to CEB blocks) 1,200MW power generation by solar producers over the past two years.

According to the carbon budget estimate, all developed countries should stop burning fossil fuel by 2030 and developing countries have to stop burning fossil fuel by 2050. Therefore, this investment is climate unfriendly and against the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) we have submitted to the UNFCCC, which plans to reduce energy-sector emissions by 4% (9,173Gg; unconditional reduction) and 16% (30,210Gg; conditional reduction). The said cabinet paper clearly reneges on that promise.

Energy self-sufficiency

The government’s goal is to become self-sufficient in energy by 2030. Pushing the dependence on coal towards 30% will derail this achievable goal as well, and this goes against the authorities’ energy policies. Constructing expensive 1,200 MW coal power plants instead of natural gas plants will cost the economy Rs. 30.3 billion annually. Moreover, they will create a long-term coal import dependency, costing the country recurrent expenses in the billions. The pragmatism of such a move is seriously under question, especially given the alternatives available (e.g. solar power), which do not create such massive dependencies.

Hypocrisy of parallel development of coal power and carbon taxes

In its most recent budget, the Sri Lankan government introduced a carbon tax for motor cycles, cars and public buses, aiming to discourage carbon emissions by the public. For the government to also propose two new coal power plants and to thereby considerably raise its own emissions is hypocritical to say the least. Such contradictions gravely undermine the country’s official stance on carbon emission management and the mitigation of climate change, both in the eyes of the local public and the global community.

At a time when Sri Lanka is working towards the Sustainable Development Goals; when the president has already officially promised to aim for a fossil fuel free economy in its development agenda; and when the Sri Lankan public has mandated that achievement through this government, as Sri Lanka’s environmental organizations, we find this proposal for two new coal power plants surprising and strongly believe that they should not be allowed

18 December 2017

Rainforest Protectors of Sri Lanka

Centre for Environmental Justice

Wildlife and Nature Protection Society

FEO Sri Lanka

Courtesy  BBC

Sri Lanka is making a special appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin to remove a ban on Ceylon tea.

Two ministers are leading a delegation to Moscow to request the suspension on Sri Lankan tea imports is lifted.

Imports were halted last week after Russia found an insect known as the Khapra beetle in a tea consignment from Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka is determined to settle the issue as it maintains the discovery was an “isolated incident”.

It is not clear whether the beetle, a known pest of rice and grain crops, was found alive or dead.

President Maithripala Sirisena has urged Sri Lankan tea farmers not to panic, assuring them that the government would take necessary steps to settle the issue.

Mr Sirisena told a rally on Sunday that he was optimistic that “as a friendly country”, Russia would help Sri Lanka.

Plantation Minister Navin Dissanayake and Industry Minister Rishad Bathiudeen are leading the special delegation to Moscow to reassure the Russian government.

Russia is one of the biggest importers of Sri Lankan tea, which accounts for nearly a quarter of its $436m (£326m) market.

Sri Lanka has insisted that a thorough investigation will be carried out and that punitive measures will be taken against anyone found guilty of tampering with its consignment.