{"id":41198,"date":"2015-02-02T21:25:19","date_gmt":"2015-02-03T03:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=41198"},"modified":"2015-02-02T14:22:54","modified_gmt":"2015-02-02T21:22:54","slug":"is-this-what-rev-rathana-rev-sobitha-champika-and-sarath-fonseka-supported","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/02\/02\/is-this-what-rev-rathana-rev-sobitha-champika-and-sarath-fonseka-supported\/","title":{"rendered":"Is this what rev Rathana \u2013 Rev Sobitha \u2013 Champika and Sarath Fonseka Supported!"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><strong>This is the proof\u00a0of that\u00a0conspiracy of unholy alliance\u00a0<\/strong><strong>(CBK,RW, UNP,JVP,JHU, RAW, CIA &amp; LTTE)<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Are you going to blame Rajapakse for this too?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>This is what the Rajapakse administration protected sri Lanka from!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>All those that revenge voted him out \u200eshould take responsibility for this and make it right!\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>New York Times article \u2013 Humiliating Sri Lanka\u2019s National Flag<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/SLflagdamage.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-41162\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/SLflagdamage.jpg\" alt=\"SLflagdamage\" width=\"470\" height=\"245\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/SLflagdamage.jpg 470w, https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/SLflagdamage-300x156.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 470px) 100vw, 470px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>New York Times article \u2018Helping Sri Lanka\u2019s New Democracy\u2019 by biased writer Ryan Goodman has humiliated Sri Lanka\u2019s National Flag\u2026 placing a yankee carrying an American flag riding the lion (Sinhala race). If this is some sort of message the US is trying to convey\u2026 it is good for the Sri Lankan people to ask themselves whether they wish to have the Americans riding on them!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Humiliating the National Flag is a penal code offence.<br \/>\nWill the new Sri Lankan Government outsourced its role from the elected President take action at least issue a statement denouncing this act?<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"157\" data-total-count=\"538\">T<strong>he \u00a0writer Ryan Goodman expressing\u00a0his biased opinion\u00a0says that;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"157\" data-total-count=\"538\"><em>Democracy advocates, including Secretary of State John Kerry, say this is the country\u2019s most important chance to open a new chapter in more than a decade.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"237\" data-total-count=\"775\"><em>But the country must make sure that members of the ousted regime do not return to power and that the new government can secure its authority. The United States \u2014 and only the United States \u2014 can do something to help make that happen.<\/em><\/p>\n<aside class=\"marginalia related-coverage-marginalia nocontent robots-nocontent\" data-marginalia-type=\"sprinkled\">\n<div class=\"nocontent robots-nocontent\"><em>The former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, and his brother, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, aren\u2019t politically dead yet. Critical parliamentary elections are scheduled for April. The new president, Maithripala Sirisena, rode to electoral victory on the back of a diverse group of parties. He must now consolidate his power so that democratic reform can go ahead.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"348\" data-total-count=\"1474\"><em>What can the United States do to help? Mr. Kerry said the United States would take up longstanding human rights concerns with the new government. The State Department has spearheaded the creation of a United Nations investigation into war crimes committed under the Rajapaksa regime during the country\u2019s civil war, which lasted from 1983 to 2009.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"480\" data-total-count=\"1954\"><em>But that inquiry offers both too much and too little at this point. Too much, because pushing for full, sweeping accountability in this fragile moment of transition could destabilize the new government and jeopardize the warming of relations between the United States and Sri Lanka. Too little, because the United Nations investigation doesn\u2019t have any teeth \u2014 the panel leading it doesn\u2019t have the powers of a criminal tribunal, and cannot even impose a financial penalty.<\/em><\/p>\n<p id=\"story-continues-3\" class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"55\" data-total-count=\"2009\"><em>Here is where Washington can play a constructive role.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"316\" data-total-count=\"2325\"><em>Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the former defense secretary, oversaw the Sri Lankan armed forces\u2019 worst atrocities during the final stages of the civil war and, as it happens, he is a naturalized American citizen. (Indeed, he used to live in Los Angeles, where he worked as a computer systems operator at Loyola Law School.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"338\" data-total-count=\"2663\"><em>As a citizen, Mr. Rajapaksa can be held liable under the War Crimes Act of 1996, which puts war crimes anywhere in the world under the jurisdiction of United States courts if the perpetrator, or the victim, is a United States citizen. Put another way, the United States has a perfect justification to go after Mr. Rajapaksa individually.<\/em><\/p>\n<p id=\"story-continues-4\" class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"396\" data-total-count=\"3059\"><em>Independent observers have long viewed Gotabaya Rajapaksa as an obstacle, perhaps even more than his brother, to a smooth political transition in Sri Lanka. There is little indication that he will respect the new government, which has opened an investigation to look into widely reported allegations that he and his brother attempted to engineer a military coup to overturn the election results.<\/em><\/p>\n<p id=\"story-continues-5\" class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"289\" data-total-count=\"3348\"><em>It is in the new government\u2019s interest to move decisively to protect its democratic victory by eliminating the threat of Mr. Rajapaksa\u2019s return to power. That is a distinct possibility if his brother, Mahinda, succeeds in a bid to maintain control over the powerful opposition party.<\/em><\/p>\n<p id=\"story-continues-6\" class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"772\" data-total-count=\"4120\"><em>That\u2019s why marginalizing Mr. Rajapaksa now is important. The new president, Mr. Sirisena, has signaled that he is open to domestic criminal prosecutions to ward off foreign war crimes trials. And the president\u2019s spokesman has indicated that the government may be willing to prosecute specific war crimes, such as the so-called White Flag incident, in which surrendering Tamil leaders with white flags were allegedly executed by soldiers on the final day of the civil war. That\u2019s a highly significant statement because, as many Sri Lankans know, and as the State Department reported to Congress, the army chief at the time said that Mr. Rajapaksa gave the order they must all be killed,\u201d and later added that he would be willing to testify in a war crimes trial.<\/em><\/p>\n<p id=\"story-continues-7\" class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"523\" data-total-count=\"4643\"><em>But proceeding against Mr. Rajapaksa will be politically challenging for the new Sri Lankan government to do on its own. The United States could help by signaling its own interest in opening a criminal case against Mr. Rajapaksa in the event that Sri Lanka doesn\u2019t. That would give the new government both an opportunity and a justification to clean its house. Because of Mr. Rajapaksa\u2019s citizenship, the United States would also be less vulnerable to accusations that it was meddling in the affairs of another nation.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"613\" data-total-count=\"5256\"><em>The Obama administration might even say, in a very public way, that it will decide whether to proceed with its own criminal inquiry after giving Sri Lanka\u2019s new establishment an opportunity to move first. Such signals from the United States could help politically marginalize the Rajapaksas at a critical point in the life of the country. They would also bolster President Sirisena\u2019s efforts to have the country repudiate the past and recognize that its best future lies with his administration. The United States should do its part to bring accountability to Sri Lanka and assist its transition to democracy.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"136\" data-total-count=\"5392\"><em><em>Ryan Goodman <\/em>is a professor of law, politics and sociology at New York University and co-editor in chief of the blog Just Security.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/01\/20\/opinion\/helping-sri-lankas-new-democracy.html?_r=0\">http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/01\/20\/opinion\/helping-sri-lankas-new-democracy.html?_r=0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the proof\u00a0of that\u00a0conspiracy of unholy alliance\u00a0(CBK,RW, UNP,JVP,JHU, RAW, CIA &amp; LTTE) Are you going to blame Rajapakse for this too?\u00a0 This is what the Rajapakse administration protected sri Lanka from! All those that revenge voted him out \u200eshould take responsibility for this and make it right!\u00a0 New York Times article \u2013 Humiliating Sri [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41198","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=41198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}