ABC can foul. See Niromi! Hear Niromi! Without a Knox …. No Demidenko

Michael Roberts, courtesy of Groundviews where a different title was used, namely, “ABC, Gordon Weiss and authoress Niromi de Soyza”

Like many people I used to think that such agencies as the BBC and ABC provided balanced reviews and were relatively unbiased. No more. Further confirmation: a recent panel presentation by ABC in March 2013 that was anchored by Jane Hutcheon,** exposed in blatant nudity the lop-sided perspectives within Aunty ABC. The presentation was timed to coincide with the UNHCR sessions in Geneva where the USA was sponsoring a resolution censuring Sri Lanka. No problem with that. But this was a serious ABC review dependent on two questionable “experts,” namely, Gordon Weiss and authoress Niromi de Soyza aka Subhodini Mariatta Anandarajah – known as Subha among her pals. When Australia has a bevy of possible commentators, from Ameer Ali to Rohan Bastin, Serge de Silva-Ranasinghe, Shanaka Jayasekera, Laksiri Jayasuirya, Noel Nadesan and Suri Ratnapala to choose from, their selections on this occasion indicated partisanship.

Under Scrutiny: FIRE AND STORM reviewed by Sanderatne

Nimal Sanderatne, courtesy of Groundviews … http://groundviews.org/2013/04/17/review-of-fire-and-storm-by-michael-roberts/

     When Michael Roberts left Peradeniya in the late seventies, he was part of an exodus of intellectuals from the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya, arguably one of the best universities at that time. The exodus of academics at that time was compelled by the economic difficulties faced by university dons. It was the second wave of such emigration that diminished the intellectual life of the university and country. The Arts Faculty of the University of Peradeniya never regained its prestigious academic status after that. Today the University of Peradeniya cannot take pride in intellectuals of the eminence of E.F.C. Ludowyck, E.R Sarachchandra, H.A.de S. Gunasekera, Fr. Ignatius Pinto, Ian Van den Driesen and many others.

Turning back the boats helps stem the Sri Lankan tide. Is this part of the solution for Australia?

Joe Kelly & Amanda Hodge, in The Australian, 28 March 2013

CO-OPERATION between Sri Lanka and Australia – and turning back asylum boats – is helping to beat people-smugglers, says Sri Lanka’s high commissioner Thisara Samarasinghe. As the Sri Lankan navy yesterday intercepted the first asylum boat to be picked up there for more than a month, the former naval chief said authorities had stopped more than 3000 asylum-seekers leaving on more than 60 boats last year. He defended the practice as safe and manageable.

 

Canberra, India ‘water down’ UN resolution on Sri Lankan human rights

Amanda Hodge, in The Weekend Australian, 23/24 March 2013

THE UN Human Rights Council has for the second year running condemned ongoing human rights abuses in Sri Lanka and called for an independent investigation into allegations of war crimes by both sides in the 26-year civil conflict. But international rights campaigners yesterday blamed Australia and India for the final watering down of the resolution, thus easing the pressure on the Sri Lankan government, by putting domestic political concerns ahead of human rights. Both countries eventually voted in favour of the US-sponsored resolution, which expresses concern at reports in Sri Lanka of continuing enforced disappearances, extra-judicial killings, torture, threats to the rule of law, religious discrimination and intimidation of activists and journalists.

After pushing for more conciliatory language, India tried unsuccessfully at the eleventh hour to toughen the resolution under pressure from allied Tamil parties that walked away from the ruling government alliance over its failure to take a hard stand against Sri Lanka. The resolution passed late Thursday with 25 votes in favour and 13 against. Sri Lanka rejected the motion and questioned the “inordinate and disproportional level of interest in a country that successfully ended a 30-year conflict against terrorism”.

US sponsors and human rights organisations have been pushing for several years for an independent, international war crimes and human rights investigation and expressed their disappointment yesterday at the failure of the Human Rights Council’s second resolution to demand such a probe. Instead the resolution asks the Sri Lankan government to conduct its own “independent and credible investigation into allegations of violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law” and to implement the recommendations of its Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission.

New York-based Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said the original UN resolution had been watered down at the insistence of India, which had been seeking a consensus vote that would garner Sri Lanka’s co-operation. And he claimed Australia’s “belated” support for the resolution – which he attributed to fear that overt criticism would prompt a fresh flood of Sri Lankan asylum-seekers – meant an opportunity was lost to persuade regional fence-sitters to support the vote. “We know Australia fears any criticism of Sri Lanka that could turn the spigot on boatpeople, but we would hope Australia would press for an end to this impunity for mass murder,” Mr Roth told The Weekend Australian yesterday. “Frankly, Australia should not allow itself to be blackmailed by Colombo in this way.In the end the Australian government did the right thing by supporting the resolution, but it would have been more helpful if that support had been articulated earlier. It might have helped us to more easily overcome some of the reluctance elsewhere in the region.”

A 2011 UN panel found credible evidence that both the Sri Lankan military and Tamil Tiger rebels committed human rights abuses in the final months of the war in 2009, when thousands of civilians were trapped in a thin strip of land in northern Sri Lanka as fighting raged around them. It found as many as 40,000 may have been killed in the final five months alone, though the Sri Lankan government estimated the death toll at 9000.

Its Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission cleared the military of allegations it deliberately attacked civilians, though it did find some individual troops were guilty of violations.

Human Rights Watch yesterday claimed Sri Lanka’s “campaign of rampant denial, distortion and intimidation should be sufficient evidence that the Sri Lankan government will never hold its forces accountable and that an independent, international investigation is needed . . . Rather than take the Council’s concerns seriously, the Council has failed victims again this year.” Amnesty International also criticised the watered-down resolution, but commended the highlighting of ongoing human rights violations.

The resolution encourages the Sri Lankan government to co-operate with UN special mandate holders, but does not name envoys such as the special rapporteur on torture who has been blocked from visiting the country. Sri Lanka’s UN representative, Mahinda Samarasinghe, said the resolution failed to acknowledge progress made by the government in ensuring justice.

ALSO SEE Shamindra Ferdinando, “Geneva vote: GTF appreciates US role, not entirely satisfied with resolution,” in The Island 25 March 2013,http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=75487

Tamil IDPs Today and Yesterday… Pudukuduyirippu and Beyond

Michael Roberts hijacking Dhaneshi Yatawara

I: Preamble by Michael Roberts

Dhaneshi Yatawara is a Sri Lankan reporter whom I do not know and have no contact with. I happened to be in Sri Lanka in April-June 2009 and collected news clippings, which now guide me to items on web. Among the latter are a series of striking photographs provided by Dhaneshi Yatawara on the 10^th and 17^th May 2009 respectively. The first lot were obviously (though not so stated) snapped on the foreshores in the Pulmoddai or Trinco area as Tamil IDPs injured and “carers” were disembarked from ICRC ships guided by the SL Navy. Parenthetically I note here between the 10^th February and 15^th May 2009 the ICRC ships “Green Ocean” and “Seruvila” escorted by the SL Navy made several trips and evacuated “over 13,500 sick and wounded people and their caretakers” (http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/ documents/ update/sri-lanka-update-090609.htm).[1]

 This Pic is not from Yatawara

Tamil Protest being mounted near MCG with TRC support

Adam Shand, in The Australian, 26 December 2012, with a different title “Tamils take their cause to the Boxing Day Test”

THE Sri Lankan cricket team faces up to 1000 protesters at Melbourne’s Boxing Day Test today amid claims by organisers that Australia had helped sanitise Sri Lanka’s brutal repression of its Tamil minority to stop the flow of asylum-seekers before next year’s federal election. One of the organisers, cricket writer Trevor Grant, said the Tamil Refugee Council would stage a noisy but peaceful demonstration outside the Melbourne Cricket Ground to send the message that the Gillard government was supporting the genocide of Tamils for its own political ends.

Sri Lanka’s willingness to use its navy to prevent asylum-seekers leaving the island nation by boat was a key factor in Australia’s support for the regime of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Mr Grant said. “The Gillard government needs to take a tough stance on asylum-seekers to the next federal election. They need the Sri Lankan government to stop the boats so Australia is prepared to turn a blind eye to the genocide of the Tamils,” he said. Mr Grant said protesters wanted a boycott of Sri Lanka until Mr Rajapaksa agrees to UN demands for an independent inquiry into war crimes and his regime ends the persecution of Tamils.

Aussies point fingers at Lankan criminals in people smuggling

Cameron Stewart and Paul Maley, in The Australian, 1 December 2012, with title reading: “Criminals moving in on asylum rackets” **

FOURFOLD increase in people-smuggler networks in Sri Lanka is driving the surge of boats that threatens to overwhelm Australia’s border protection regime.  Australian authorities have identified about 12 major people-smugglers operating in Sri Lanka – up from three a year ago. The expansion has been driven by criminal opportunists seeking to cash in on the lucrative trade by spreading false promises of jobs in Australia. However, the Gillard government believes it is now seeing early signs that its controversial policy of returning more than 700 arrivals to their homeland is making Sri Lankans, especially Sinhalese, reluctant to purchase a boat passage to Australia.

Asylum Seekers from Lanka: No Solutions in Sight

 Michael Roberts

Beset by an upsurge of asylum-seekers arriving by boat from Sri Lanka, Australian government and media personnel continue to rely on the tired shibboleths of the past. Three shortcomings hinder their evaluations.  Let me stress three points briefly.

1. The increase in migration is largely due to the snowballing effect of chain migration with Sri Lankan kinsfolk and friends who have migrated to the Western countries over the last forty years assisting aspirant relatives and friends to find the monies for the journeys (legal or illegal); while intra-familial dynamics encourage poorer relatives in Lanka to try and emulate their cousins in the West by getting across to the new Eldorado.[1]
2. Contrary to Australian perceptions the journeys by boats are not inevitable death traps. If one excludes the instances of boats from Indonesia that have come a cropper, I know of only two or three from Sri Lanka that have run into real difficulties (as distinct from manufactured sinking within sight of big ships). I challenge people to provide contrary evidence in circumstances where the “boat people” have satellite phone connections.
3. With reference to Tamil Sri Lankans the Australian evaluations are directed by the concept of “persecution” – with the alternative being “economic migration.” This is simpleton. As such, it is misleading. “Persecution” is a gross tool and does not allow for feelings that are short of terror. There is, for one, such a thing as “harassment.” There is also the possibility of “alienation” among the Tamils arising from a sense of marginalization (genuine, exaggerated or imagined).

Different Photographs in The Weekend Australian: Implications

Michael Roberts

I: A striking aspect of The Weekend Australian’s coverage of Sri Lanka and its asylum-seeker issue on 15/16 December 2012 is its deployment of two different photographs in its online and print versions. The online item by Bandula Jayasekara had this image from AFP:

The caption runs thus: “This 2009 photograph is said to be of troops walking among debris inside a Sri Lanka war zone during the conflict between government forces and the Tamil Tigers. Source: AFP.” Note that this image could easily be misread to indicate evidence of heavy shelling. The photograph is from a Ministry of Defence source and was part of their web imagery. The photo would have been taken on or around the 17/18^th May 2009 when the Last redoubt of the LTTE had been overrun. What we see are the burning hulks of LTTE equipment which the Tigers, in the standard practice of armies worldwide, blew up as their backs were to the wall. This act of demolition was reported by news media in mid-May as it occurred and confirmed (to me anyway) by the Indian reporters Kanchan Prasad and Muralidhar Reddy who were at the rear of the battle lines and who entered the coastal strip every day from 14th to 18^th May inclusively.

Tamil Tigers likely to dominate Sri Lankan asylum-seekers

Bandula Jayasekara, in The Weekend Australian, 15/16 December 2012 … see Editorial C0mment at end

THERE is a misconception among some Australians regarding the issue of Sri Lankan asylum-seekers because of a misinformation campaign carried out by parties with vested interests. I am given to understand that some Australians sympathise with the asylum-seekers without having a clear picture of the situation. However, their sympathy would be in the interest of only the minority of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam supporters, who have a long-term agenda in Australia and other Western countries.There are many concerns about remnants of the LTTE (the terrorist group that tried to divide Sri Lanka through a violent struggle) still engaged in human smuggling. For a long time, these groups have operated beyond the shores of Sri Lanka, carrying out aggressive fundraising campaigns and engaged in human smuggling and transnational crimes.