{"id":115649,"date":"2021-06-30T16:13:42","date_gmt":"2021-06-30T23:13:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=115649"},"modified":"2021-06-30T16:13:42","modified_gmt":"2021-06-30T23:13:42","slug":"erasing-the-eelam-victory-part-20-c-9c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/06\/30\/erasing-the-eelam-victory-part-20-c-9c\/","title":{"rendered":"ERASING THE EELAM VICTORY   Part 20 C 9C"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>KAMALIKA PIERIS<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p><strong>PARANAGAMA\nREPORT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Paranagama report was discussed by me in two earlier essays. The essays\ncan be accessed at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/12\/28\/the-paranagama-report-part-1\/\">https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/12\/28\/the-paranagama-report-part-1\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-wordpress wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-lankaweb-com\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"dgp7UzWjEU\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/12\/31\/the-paranagama-report-part-2\/\">THE \u201cPARANAGAMA REPORT\u201d Part 2<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; visibility: hidden;\" title=\"&#8220;THE \u201cPARANAGAMA REPORT\u201d Part 2&#8221; &#8212; LankaWeb.com\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/12\/31\/the-paranagama-report-part-2\/embed\/#?secret=zk2ys9DAgQ#?secret=dgp7UzWjEU\" data-secret=\"dgp7UzWjEU\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;The Presidential Commission to Investigate into Complaints regarding Missing Persons\u201d\nknown as the Paranagama Commission, was appointed in August 2013. The scope of\nthe Commission\u2019s mandate was expanded into a second mandate by Gazette\nnotification on 15 July 2014, to address the facts and circumstances\nsurrounding civilian loss of life and the question of the responsibility of any\nindividual, group or institution for violations of international law during the conflict\nthat ended in May 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;The Commission consisted of Maxwell P. Paranagama (Chairman), Manohari Ramanathan and Suranjana Vidyaratne, Director\nGeneral of Census and Statistics. There was a\nLegal Advisory Council comprising a team of international legal and military experts,\nwith long years of experience in war crimes courts &nbsp;to assist the Commission. This team consisted\nof Sir Desmond de Silva QC, Prof. David Crane, Sir Geoffrey Nice and Maj. Gen.\nJohn Holmes.&nbsp; Obtaining the expert onion\nof these legal luminaries and the military opinion of Maj Gen Homes was a\nmaster stroke, observed Shamindra Ferdinando. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sir Desmond\nhad worked in Human Rights and war crime issues in Sierra Leone, Belgrade and\nSyria. Desmond de Silva had&nbsp;&nbsp; provided\nthe Paranagama Commission with a comprehensive analysis of the law of armed\nconflict in relation to the allegations against Sri Lanka. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;Prof. Crane was the Chief Prosecutor of the\nSpecial Court for Sierra Leone and had spent 30 years working for the US\nfederal government. Sir Geoffrey was the deputy prosecutor to the International\nCriminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Major General John Holmes\nUK, former Commanding Officer of the SAS, provided an independent Military\nReport on the conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Advisory Council was&nbsp;\nalso supported by&nbsp; other experts\nsuch as Mr. Rodney Dixon, QC (UK\/ South Africa), Professor Michael Newton (USA,\nVanderbilt University) who formerly served as the Senior Advisor to the United\nStates Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes, Commander William Fenrick (Canada),\nProfessor Nina Jorgensen (Harvard, Chinese University of Hong Kong).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The&nbsp;&nbsp; opinions of the legal team were in Sri\nLanka\u2019s favor. They took the bottom out of the &nbsp;case that the western powers, the Tamil\nSeparatist Movement, western funded NGOs and the largely western funded OHCHR\nwas trying to build up against Sri Lanka ,observed Shamindra Ferdinando. &nbsp;If the Holmes report had been tabled before\nthe UNHRC that alone could have turned things in Sri Lanka\u2018s favor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nParanagama Commission report was specifically targeted by the UNHRC at its\nSeptember session, in Geneva in 2015. The legal\nopinion of these experts were so damaging to the war crimes project against Sri\nLanka that the OHCHR recommended that the Paranagama Commission be abolished\nall together, so that any report it puts out will have no validity. The Commission should be\ndisbanded and its cases transferred to a credible investigating body set up in\nconnection with the families of the disappeared, Geneva said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There was a carefully orchestrated NGO campaign against Desmond de\nSilva.&nbsp; 38 NGOs wrote to the President,\nasking that Desmond be removed from his position of advisor. Instead, Desmond\nde Silva was appointed as an advisor to Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremasinghe,\nso that his hands were tied. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The pressure\ntactics worked, said Shamindra. The Paranagama Commission gave in and tweaked\nthe findings to please the powers that be. The legal opinions of Desmond and\nthe rest were not included as annexures in the Paranagama report. Only the\nmilitary assessment of Maj Gen john Holmes was included. Had the annexures been\npublished that would have been a legal weapon against Eelam. But Island\u201d\nnewspaper published the legal opinions in full &nbsp;and soon everybody knew what the team of\nlawyers had said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite the\nadditional time requested by the Commission to complete investigating\ncomplaints received, the Commission was wound down. The Paranagama Commission\nreport and Udalagama commission report were tabled in Parliament&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; along with the UNHRC report on alleged\nhuman rights violations in Sri Lanka on 20.10.2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The value of the Paranagama Commission report is that for its 2nd\nMandate it has reviewed a great deal of material already in the public domain,\nboth primary and secondary. They include \u2018Darusman Report\u2019 (2011), the \u2018LLRC\nReport\u2019 (2011), Petrie Report 2011), the Sooka Report (2014) \u2018An Unfinished\nWar: Torture and Sexual Violence in Sri Lanka 2009\u20142014\u2019, the Reports to\nCongress by the US State Department (2009), reports by the International Crisis\nGroup, Amnesty International, the University Teachers for Human Rights\n(Jaffna), Human Rights Watch, and many others.&#8221; It is unlikely that a more\ncomprehensive and authoritative examination of the last phase of the war has\nbeen compiled thus far, observed Sanja Jayatilleke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nParanagama report said that it aimed to analyze &#8220;the complex legal\nstandards applicable to military operations such as those that occurred in the\nfinal phase of the Sri Lankan conflict and to apply them to the unique set of\nfactual circumstances that presented itself during the relevant time\nperiod&#8221; &#8220;This exercise has not been adequately carried out in the\nexisting report of the UN Secretary General\u2019s Panel of Experts (Darusman\nReport)&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Paranagama Commission\nrejected the Darusman report. The Paranagama Commission also rejected the\nsuggestion that civilians were either targeted directly or indiscriminately by\nthe Sri Lanka Army as part of an alleged genocidal plan. Paranagama Commission\nfound that the principal reason for loss of life during the last phase of the\nwar was the hostage&nbsp;&nbsp; taking and use of\nhuman shields. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Paranagama Commission\nfound that it was the LTTE that killed majority of Tamil civilians during the\nlast 12 hours of the final siege. The Commission is satisfied that a\nlarge percentage of the LTTE cadres were killed and the vast majority of\nthe civilians, who had been held hostage, were saved. (Continued)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KAMALIKA PIERIS PARANAGAMA REPORT Paranagama report was discussed by me in two earlier essays. The essays can be accessed at https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/12\/28\/the-paranagama-report-part-1\/ &nbsp;The Presidential Commission to Investigate into Complaints regarding Missing Persons\u201d known as the Paranagama Commission, was appointed in August 2013. The scope of the Commission\u2019s mandate was expanded into a second mandate by Gazette [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kamalika-pieris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115649","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=115649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115649\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}