{"id":111788,"date":"2021-02-17T16:17:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-17T23:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=111788"},"modified":"2021-02-17T16:17:00","modified_gmt":"2021-02-17T23:17:00","slug":"consensus-or-compromise-will-mean-admission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/02\/17\/consensus-or-compromise-will-mean-admission\/","title":{"rendered":"Consensus or Compromise will mean Admission"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Palitha Senanayake<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Discussing\nthe impending issues, Sri Lanka will be confronted with at the forthcoming\nUNHRC sessions, Minister Sarath Weerasekera, blurted,\u2019 The arguments we\npresent will not matter munch because they are determined to punish us\u201d. This\nappears to be the thinking of the Government too, and in that mood it further\nconfirms what the foreign secretary Mr. Colombage has aired on this topic, at a\nfew instances. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nhowever appears, a rather capitulating attitude and an un-redeemable commiment,\ngiven the fact that, what the country and its forces have been accused of;\nkilling civilians and violating basic human rights in milieu, that was 100 %\nLTTE creation. This should mean that the Government is prepared to admit, at\nleast to some extent, that our forces, that risked their lives, with an\nextraordinary number killed and wounded, in rescuing 290,000 civilians, are\nguilty of deliberately killing, and violating the right of, civilians?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listening\nto M\/s Tamara Kunanayagam, our former UNHCR representative, the other day who\nfaced some of the UNHCR sessions in her forthright manner, it is all but right\nfor us to withdraw from this 30\/ A resolution \nbecause she has been privy to how US exerted  undue influence on those resolutions against\nSri Lanka. The issue now is, having rightly withdrawn from that resolution, on\nwhat and with whom are we now trying to reach a consensus? Further the attitude\nof the present UNHCR secretary is quite clear when you study the remarks she\nhas made in her new report; she obviously thinks that she could treat the\ndemocratically elected Government of Sri Lanka like a doormat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nare two salient factors in this whole scenario of \u2018human rights violation\u2019,\nthat the present or any of the previous Governments have not taken in to\nreckoning and those two factors beam out as daylight amidst the concocted\ndarkness of these allegations. These two issues have neither been considered\neven in the Maxwell Paranagama report nor in any other document that deals with\nthe subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nfirst of these is the Census report of special population census survey carried\nout by the Department of Census & Statistics for the North East in the year\n2011 and then the report of the General census carried out in 2012.  Apparently this figure of 40,000 missing\npersons, brought in Darusman and UNOCHA reports, is based on a report an AGA\nnamed Pratheepan has submitted to the Darusman \npanel in 2012, having collected the statistics from the Grama Niladharis\nwho were present at the Nanthikadal site at this so- called \u2018last stage\u2019. It is\na fact that the Grama Niladharies have been the authorities in declaring\npopulation figures as per their voters list, since the LTTE did not allow the\nDepartment of census & statistics to conduct a proper survey in the North\nand some parts of the East since 1981. Further, it is also a fact that these\nGrama Niladharies worked under the LTTE since 2002, courtesy Ranil W Peace\nAgreement. It is also revealed that these GN\u2019s , in the absence of a population\nsurvey, have  been manipulating their\nvoters list for subsidies and purposes. Therefore, it is these Grama\nNiladharies who have declared a figure of 330,000 as the number of persons to\nhave been present at  Nanthikadal from\nFebruary to May 2009  as per the records\nthey claimed to maintain of the Vanni area (4 Districts).  They have been maintaining these records by\nadding the persons born from Birth certificates issued and deducting those for\nwhom death certificates have been issued.        <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However,\nwhen the special survey was commissioned by the Department of census in 2011,\nas is usually done, these same Grama Niladharies were requested to present the\nfigures they had in their possession and were told to update the same after enumerating,\nthe persons present, known to have died due to natural or unnatural causes and\nthe missing. Since the Grama Niladharies were not able to visit all the\nhouseholds in that limited time, school teachers from the GN divisions were\nhired with the co-ordination of the GN. \nThe wider purpose of this survey was to issue Death certificates to\nthose who died during this questionable period between 2006 January to 2009\nMay; the period of displacement. This report, which covers the entire Northern\nprovince including Jaffna and Vanni, is available in the Department website and\ngives the following results,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Total number\ndied from January 2009 to May 2009              8,898 persons<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of which deaths\ndue to age and sickness                                 1,067 persons<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Do               due to natural disasters                                      45\npersons<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Do               due\nto Accidents and homicides                     454 \npersons<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Do               due\nto other                                               \n     6,858 \npersons<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Do               due\nto reasons not stated                         \n       584 persons        <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we also\nhave the untraceable persons report for Northern province in the same website\nand that gives a verified figure of 2,651 persons of which the Jaffna figure of\n651and that number is suspected to have migrated to UK and Canada through\nIndia. Therefore, for Darusman to maintain that 40,000 people have died from\nJan to May 2009,  some people who have\nnot registered their births in Sri Lanka should also may have died at\nNanthikada!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This exercise\ngets still more interesting when the General survey carried out as at end of\n2012 results were released in 2016.  By\nthat time all the IDP\u2019s internal migrations have been settled and hence the\nenumeration was more realistic.  In 2011\nRev. Rayappu Joseph declared under oaths to the LLRC that not 40,000 but 146,679 persons\nhave perished at Nanthikadal claiming that the entire Vanni population that was\npresent there was 429,059 and only <\/strong>282,380 have been\nrescued.  The good Rev. had released\nthese figures to Frances Harrison of BBC and even to Yasmin Sooka (Darusman\nPanel) who have quoted this figure in their publications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the 2012 All Island general census report was\npublished in 20015 the report mentioned   430,525 persons as the total verified and\nliving Vanni population that made not only Rev. Rayappu\u2019s figures partisan but\neven his total population figures wrong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, the question now is, is Sri Lanka, with the\nGovernment that fought the war in power, going to admit all these fabrications\nas true when incontrovertible evidence is available to the contrary??<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other major factor concerning\nthese allegations is, what is the LAST STAGE of the war that this Darusman &\n UNOCHA reports are interpreting as? Is\nit possible to identify the rescue operation of the Sri Lanka army as the \u2018last\nstage\u2019? As far as SL army was concerned the war was over on the 22nd<\/sup>\nJanuary after they captured Kilinochchi and Mulaitivu and after the LTTE\nvacated their headquarters which they occupied for the last 27 years of the\nconflict.  That was when the Government\ndropped leaflets from the air and called the LTTE fighters to surrender with an\noffer of clemency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The LTTE hot footed their belongings\nfrom Kilinochchi and Mulaitivu and took a load of civilians for their\nprotection and went in to a hiding in a lagoon. They took along 300+ civilians\nand deployed them to construct bunkers, making them also combatants and\npositioned themselves in the No Fire Zones declared by the Government. Do you\ncall that the LAST STAGE of the war when the war was well over by then and it\nwas only the capture of LTTE leadership that remained?  The Second WW was over on the day they\ncapture Berlin and not the day Hitler committed suicide. Conventionally, a war\nis called \u2018Over\u2019 the day the headquarters of one party is captured. Please\nstudy how the NATO bombed civilian sites in Kosovo and brought army generals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic to trial.\nPrabhakaran did exactly the same thing and he went further by shooting the\nfleeing civilians. These are documented well in the Darusman report. The LTTE\nmay be no more but what about Sampanthan who said that the LTTE is the sole\nrepresentative of Tamil people and Suren Surenthiran who financed the LTTE?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lankan\nForeign affairs officials are lining up for foreign travel but how many have\nstudied these cases and explore the possibilities of taking these culprits who\nare now portraying themselves as victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any compromise\non this issue will not be in favor of the mandate this Government is enjoying!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Palitha Senanayake Discussing the impending issues, Sri Lanka will be confronted with at the forthcoming UNHRC sessions, Minister Sarath Weerasekera, blurted,\u2019 The arguments we present will not matter munch because they are determined to punish us\u201d. This appears to be the thinking of the Government too, and in that mood it further confirms what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}