{"id":68222,"date":"2017-07-26T21:51:13","date_gmt":"2017-07-27T03:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=68222"},"modified":"2017-07-26T03:25:23","modified_gmt":"2017-07-26T10:25:23","slug":"all-moves-ready-to-punish-those-who-gave-political-and-military-leadership-to-the-war-the-act-has-already-been-signed-former-president-mr-mahinda-raapaksa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/07\/26\/all-moves-ready-to-punish-those-who-gave-political-and-military-leadership-to-the-war-the-act-has-already-been-signed-former-president-mr-mahinda-raapaksa\/","title":{"rendered":"All moves ready to punish those who gave political and military leadership to the War. \u00a0The Act has already been signed. \u2013 Former President Mr. Mahinda Raapaksa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mahinda Rajapaksa Former President of Sri Lanka\u00a0(<\/strong>Translated by A.A.M.NIZAM \u2013 MATARA)<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The former President Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa said that under the Act for the establishment of the Office of the Missing Persons which was signed recently by the President foreign countries have been empowered to request to hand over anyone who is suspected of making a person missing in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

Given below is the translation of the text of an open letter written by Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa to the Most en. Mahanayake Therroes and the Maha Sangha.<\/p>\n

An open letter respectfully written to the Maha Sangha including the Most Venerable Mahanayake Theroes<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Establishing new Institutions and enacting new Laws empowering central authority to foreign powers for hunting war heroes,<\/p>\n

A few days ago the President signed the Act empowering the Office of Missing Persons and declared that it was a progressive step taken for reconciliation.\u00a0 It was by force disregarding the objections of the joint opposition that this Act got enacted unitedly by the UNP, the SLFP group in the government, the JVP, and the Tamil National Alliance. They did not spend even 40 minutes to debate this Bill.<\/p>\n

The special attention of the Most Ven, Maha Sangha should be focused on the following conditions of the Missing Persons Office Act Ni, 14 of 2016 as amended by the Missing Persons Office (Revised) Act No, 9 of 2017 which has been empowered andlegalized by the signature of the President.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Although the Institution that will be established under this Law will be termed as an Office, under Clause No, 12 of this Act this will be an Institution similar to a Court of Law empowered to accept and investigate complaints, obtain evidence from witnesses, summon people and issue orders, and for holding enquiries.<\/li>\n
  2. Clause 21 of the Act has empowered this Office to obtain financial assistance from any local or forein source. Accordingly this Office can obtain funds from any foreign government, International non-Government organisations, and even from non-proscribed Tamil diaspora Tiger Terrorist organisations.<\/li>\n
  3. Under Clause 12(B)iii.the Missig Persons Office has been empowered to accept as evidence any statement or document even contravening all rules and conditions of the Evidence Ordinance. Due to non consideration of the Evidence Ordinance a suspect summoned by this Institition will not even have the just protection available for an accused under an ordinary criminal case.<\/li>\n
  4. In accordance with Clause 12(E) of this Act all Government Institutions, including Security Forces and Intelligence Units are obliged to provide all information and documents requested by the Missing Persons Office even violating the State Secrecy Act.<\/li>\n
  5. As per Clause No, 15 of this Act, even the Supreme Court has no power to order to submit to a Court of Law information provided to the Missing Persons Office under the promise of the protection of rights. Similarly the Right to Informatin Act does not become applicable in respect of the Missing Persns Office.<\/li>\n
  6. Clause No. 25 of the Act has given the liberty of making it incapable to file a civil or criminal case against an act of officers of the Missing Persons Office, any lapse by them or on any report published by them. Any act being done by the Missing Persons Office cannot be challenged unless by a case filed in the Supreeme Court under Article Nos.126 and 140 of the constitution. However it becomes meaningless to go to the Supreme Court since Missing Persons Office is empowered under Clause No, 15 of the Act not to divulge information even to the Supreme Court.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Infirmation received by the Missing Persons Office can be directed under Clause No. 14(1)(A) to the Law implementation or prosecution institutions.\u00a0 The Missing Persons Office is one of the many imstitutions the yahyapalana government has agreed to establish to invesrigate about the past under United Nation\u2019s Human Rights Council proposal No. 30\/1 of 14th<\/sup> October 2015.\u00a0\u00a0 It is clear that the objective of this Office is to provide information to other institutions.\u00a0 Recently the present government presented a draft Bill to the Parliaament to empower in Sri Lanka the International Convention against making persons missing.\u00a0 Under this proposed Law foreign countries can request Sri Lanka to handover to them any person suspected of having connection to making any person missing in Sri Lanka.\u00a0 Accordingly they can present such a Sri Lankan person brought to their country on suspicion of a crime committed in Sri Lanka to a Court in their country or to an International Tribunal.<\/p>\n

    The government had to postpone the debate on the draft Bill brought forward to empower in Sri Lanka the International Convention against making persons missing due to objections raised by Maha Sangha and the public. But the Ministers of the government have said that the postponement is only temporary and the draf Bill will be taken up for debate in the Parliament in the future.\u00a0 Accordingly we can see that these new Laws being brought by the yahyapalana government have a coincidence to each other. The foreign countries have a right to request to handover a person against whom an allegation has been made by the Missing Persons Office which is sustained with foreign funds, under the provisions of the international Convention.\u00a0 Accordingly the foreign country that gets down a Sri Lankan suspect to their country can file a case against him in that country or to hand him over to an International Tribunal.<\/p>\n

    After it became necessary to postpone the draft Bill to empower in Sri Lanka the International Convention against making persons missing the UNP as well as the SLFP Ministers in order to justify that Bill said that this is a Law that will be applicable only to the future and not for the past. This is a totally incorrect statement.\u00a0 If the draft Bill brought in to empower in Sri Lanka the International Convention against making persons missing was approved in the Parliament it would automatically become effective retrospectively under the article 13(6) of our constitution.\u00a0 It is very clear that there is a great enthusiasm among the yahapalana political parties such as the UNP, the SLFP group in the government, the Tamil National Alliance and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna to punish our armed forces and the political authorities who gave leadership to the War.<\/p>\n

    Under these new Laws the yahapalaana government and draft Bills that have been presented to the Parliament, the foreign authorities have been entrusted with a central task for hunting our war heroes through the Sri Lankan Laws itself.\u00a0 I believe that the attention of the Maha Sangha including the Most Venerable Tri-Nikaya Mahanayake Theroes will get focussed on this great betrayal being carried out under the name of establishing reconciliation.<\/p>\n

    Mahinda Rajapaksa<\/p>\n

    Former President of Sri Lanka<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Mahinda Rajapaksa Former President of Sri Lanka\u00a0(Translated by A.A.M.NIZAM \u2013 MATARA) The former President Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa said that under the Act for the establishment of the Office of the Missing Persons which was signed recently by the President foreign countries have been empowered to request to hand over anyone who is suspected of making […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aamnizam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68222","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=68222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}