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Ms Heidi Hautala President, Sub-commission on Human Rights European Union. Dear Ms Hautala Re: An appeal to the European Union not to extend the GSP plus tariff arrangement to Sri Lanka The Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations (AFTA) an umbrella organization of the peak Tamil associations in 7 States and Territories in Australia and 2 peak Tamil organizations in the two main New Zealand cities, Wellington and Auckland, would like to bring to your attention, the continuing deterioration of the humanitarian and human rights situation of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka – A rogue State? Under the present Rajapaksa regime, run autocratically under emergency regulations and the Prevention of Terrorism Act, by 4 Rajapaksa brothers, President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Defense secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa, Presidential Advisor and an appointed member of parliament, Basil Rajapaksa and Minister of Ports and Aviation, Chamal Rajapaksa, Tamil citizens of that country in particular and all the citizens in general are going through serious human right violations. By maintaining an iron grip on the free media through intimidation of the journalists, abduction and physical attacks and extrajudicial killings, news on human rights violations are swept under the carpet. Between 2000 and 2009 at least 21 Tamil Journalists have been killed in Sri Lanka either by the state security forces or paramilitary groups working closely with the security forces. "The people who murder journalists in Sri Lanka feel so well protected that they carry out fresh murders to mark the anniversaries of their preceding ones," Reporters Without Borders said on 30th April 2007. "On the second anniversary of the murder of Tamilnet.com editor Sivaram Dharmeratnam and the first anniversary of the murder of two Uthayan employees, the killers struck again, murdering another journalist with impunity in an area controlled by the army. We call on the authorities to identify and punish those responsible", said further, Reporters Without Borders. Under Rajapaksa regime, between April 2004 and March 2009 34 journalists and media workers have been killed. Out of this, 29 were Tamils. In January 2007, the former Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Mangala Samaraweera was quoted in several news agencies stating that a disappearance takes place in Sri Lanka every five hours. "It has been reported by local and international human rights organisations that a person is abducted every five hours. Kidnappings, abductions and killings have become common incidents. No matter who does it, as a government we are responsible for it," Sunday Leader, a popular, English weekly quoted him on 28 January 2007. Commenting on this Minister’s comment, Asian Human Rights Commission in a media statement on 02 February 2007 stated; “These comments, which he wrote in a letter to the president, Mahinda Rajapakse do not come as much of a surprise to close observers of the human rights situation in Sri Lanka in recent months. The reappearance of white vans without number plates is the symbolic manner in which people popularly talk about disappearances. Between 1987 to 1991 in the south, it was estimated that about 30,000 people were officially recognised to have been disappeared. This period is known even today to be a “period of terror”. Since President Rajapakse took office a similar period of terror has emerged in the north-east and in the capital Colombo and its surrounds. Anyone including businessmen, journalists under the pretext of having alleged links with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) could disappear anytime. Even a vice chancellor of a university disappeared never to be found. Families of many of these disappeared are reported to have been paying ransom monies for a long period in the hope they would be returned safely. People in Colombo, particularly Tamils, who had made Colombo their home for generations including businessmen, are those who are most scared when darkness falls. Everyone is aware that once a disappearance takes place there is hardly anything that can be done” Several global human rights agencies have concluded that Sri Lanka is a leader in the world for forced disappearances. It is a form of censorship and enforcement used by the Sri Lankan government to silence the Tamils during war and after war. Under the Rajapaksa regime, the post war region of Eastern Sri Lanka is under the iron grip of silence using the pro-government armed group known as Karuna group and other Para-militaries. The Sri Lankan Armed Forces aid and abet these groups in kidnapping and abductions. To date, Sri Lanka has not taken any action to bring any of the perpetrators to books thus having complicity and maintaining a culture of impunity.
Although the east of the island came under the control of the Sri Lankan security forces and the paramilitaries some two years ago, disappearances of Tamil youth and civil liberty officers are still continuing. The Asian Human Rights Commission has repeatedly characterized the situation of Sri Lanka as one of an “exceptional collapse of the rule of law”. Sri Lanka’s blatant refusal to independent investigations Since Sri Lanka defeated the LTTE militarily in May 2009, detention incommunicado and torture of Tamils in secret camps in the north east and in the south have escalated. On September 4th British Channel 4 Television showed a video of Sri Lankan soldiers involved in execution style killing of naked blindfolded males supposed to be Tamils. Sri Lanka carried out its own investigation on this video using ex-army officials and completed it within 2 weeks and concluded that the video is not real but a doctored one enacted and released by the LTTE. Noting that two of the four experts cited by the government were full-time government employees, another had previously acted on behalf of the government, "and the basis on which the fourth was identified and selected as an expert remains unclear," Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions, has said that the government studies could not be characterized as impartial. "The only way to do this [authenticate the video] is for an independent and impartial investigation to take place,'' Alston further said. The Sri Lankan foreign Minister, Rohitha Bogollagama dismissed allegations from human rights groups in early June 2009, that more than 20,000 civilians were killed earlier in May in clashes with Tamil militants, most of them from government shelling, The Times of London reported. He further said, “Sri Lanka will fight attempts in the United Nations to investigate it for alleged war crimes against civilians”.
World's respected Human Rights organisations have consistently raised their voice to create awareness of the violations of Human Rights of Tamils by the Sri Lankan regime. The world's renowned media institutions slammed the freedom of press, threats against journalists and the repression of media by the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL). Genocide Prevention Project, a US based NGO placed Sri Lanka on Red Alert together with Sudan and Pakistan. Sri Lanka has been classified as a "Failed State" for the last few years for its failed policies and absence of rule of law. Many HR organisations criticised Sri Lanka's judiciary and its mechanisms for witness protection. So far, all international mechanisms have failed to stop the unabated culture of impunity against Tamils. The world has witnessed the mass atrocities, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Sri Lanka in the name of "war on terror" and it still continues. As of now, more than 250,000 Tamil civilians uprooted by the war are in the "detention camps" under the same climate of impunity and without outside contacts. Sri Lanka disregards International law, negates UN obligation and violates its basic mandatory responsibilities. If this culture of impunity is tolerated by the International community and UN, it would undermine the basis of International Human Rights principles and shake the UN’s foundations. Realising the seriousness of the situation, UN Secretary General Ban ki-moon dispatched his Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs B. Lynn Pascoe to Colombo on the 16th of September with an urgent message to President Rajapaksa and to find out personally the IDP situation in the camps and tell that to the IC. On Saturday the 19th of September, Pascoe urged the Sri Lankan government to conduct an independent inquiry into allegations of war crimes during the civil war against the LTTE. After a visit to the camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs), Pascoe also said that the Sri Lankan government must make quicker progress in shutting down such camps and working towards political reconciliation among the country's warring ethnic factions. Speaking at a press conference in Colombo, Pascoe said: “Internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in Government-run camps in Sri Lanka lack basic rights of freedom of movement, and the country is not making the expected progress towards a lasting peace in the wake of the end earlier this year to fighting between military forces and Tamil rebels”. To reiterate his concerns for the Tamil IDPs in Sri Lanka within a week, UN Secretary General dispatched his representative on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, Walter Kalin to Sri Lanka to visit the IDP camps and find for himself direct from the inmates the situation under which they are being held. On 21st of September 2009, a crucial report on Sri Lanka’s alleged war crimes was expected to be submitted by the US Department of State to the US Congress for evaluation but now the State Department has asked for more time to submit this report. US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, Stephen Rapp in an interview with Time magazine on September 14 disclosed that his office was now primarily focusing on Sri Lanka. Evidences already established in the US Professor Boyle has argued Sri Lanka’s violations of international law in several articles and is published as a booklet by the Tamilnet website; http://www.tamilnet.com/img/publish/2009/09/BoyleBookGSP3.pdf Tamils Against Genocide has catalogued the evidence of Sri Lanka’s violations in the following two documents: - Model indictment against Maj. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, and Gothabaya Rajapakse presented to the U.S. Justice Department details violations up to January 2009.
http://www.tamilsagainstgenocide.org/Docs/Final800pIndictmentDocument.pdf
- Legal action, filed in the District Court of District of Columbia, USA against IMF, contains additional violations until March 2009
http://www.tamilnet.com/img/publish/2009/07/IMF_Lawsuit_March_v_6_final.pdf
AFTA’s appeal AFTA strongly feels that Government of Sri Lanka’s horrendous and continuing violations of international law with absolute impunity, render it ineligible for GSP plus preferential treatment as the 130-page report by the European Union says that "Sri Lanka has failed to honour important human-rights commitments, and is ineligible for GSP Plus". The international community has watched in silence the failure of the UN system to uphold human rights and humanitarian laws in Sri Lanka as evidenced by - the failure to have a resolution passed to this effect at the UN Human Rights Council in May 2009
- the repeated failure of the Security Council to include Sri Lanka in its agenda, and finally
- the abdication of moral and diplomatic leadership by the UN Secretary General.
Under these circumstances, AFTA has been arguing with the Australian government for some time now that only sanctions similar to the ones imposed on the Mugabe regime of Zimbabwe would break the indifference and intransigence of the Sri Lankan government. AFTA also would like to draw the attention of the members of the EU that Sri Lankan cabinet ministers have been boasting that their country can find alternate markets for its products, especially in countries of the east like China, Pakistan India and Iran. EU whilst helping NGOs in their efforts to rehabilitate and resettle the IDPs, could use the GSP plus as a lever to ensure Sri Lanka’s compliance with international law, norms and standards. Offering GSP plus concessions to Sri Lanka at this juncture would amount to condoning their blatant human right violations, and funding the forced detention of civilians, the expansion of the oppressive security apparatus, and the ethnic cleansing of traditional Tamil homeland. Therefore, on behalf of the Tamils living in Australia and New Zealand, AFTA appeals to the EU, not to extend its GSP plus preferential tariff arrangement it has now with Sri Lanka until Sri Lanka demonstrates that it is acting according to the international laws and norms.
Yours truly Dr. Raga Ragavan Chairperson Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations Inc Mobile: + 61 - 402387920 30 September 2009 |
