Author: TELO Admin

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is expected to announce that Provincial Council elections will be held by June this year.

With this in mind, he will meet former PC members from parties that form the ruling alliance for a discussion on Wednesday. He is to tell them to prepare the election machinery while assisting in the Government’s development activities.

It is not immediately clear why the Government has been prompted to go for the PC polls. At present all provinces are being run by the respective Governors. The issue is also contained in the UN Human Rights Council Resolution on Sri Lanka. It calls for the early conduct of PC polls – a position taken up by even neighbouring India. The PCs were the outcome of the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement of 1987.

A high-ranking government source said yesterday that as a prelude to the polls, the Government would introduce legislation for the electoral process. This has remained a contributory factor for delays in the conduct of elections.

The Government is yet to pass amendments to the Provincial Council Elections (Amendment) Act to conduct polls under the previous proportional representation system.

The Supreme Court, from which the then President Maithripala Sirisena sought a determination, ruled that PC polls could be held either under the old one or on a new system only after amending legislation was passed.

All nine PCs are now non-operational after their five-year terms lapsed at various stages.

he Sri Lanka Air Force is celebrating its 70th Anniversary on 02 Mar 2021 and also the presentation of President’s Colours to No. 5 Fighter Squadron and No. 6 Helicopter Squadron of the Sri Lanka Air Force.

To commemorate this historical event, a Fly Past and an Aerobatic Display by teams of the Indian air and naval forces are also being organized for the first time in Sri Lanka at a grand scale at Galle Face from 03-05 Mar 2021.

As a gesture of solidarity, and in keeping with years of close interaction and camaraderie between the two countries and their militaries, the Indian Air Force (IAF) and Indian Navy will participate in the event with an Aerobatic Display by Sarang (Advance Light Helicopter), Surya Kiran (Hawks), Tejas Fighter Aircraft, Tejas Trainer and the Dornier Maritime Patrol Aircraft, the Indian High Commission said on Sunday.

A total of 23 aircraft of the Indian Air Force and Indian Navy would participate in the grand event.

The detachment for the Aerobatic Display arrived in Colombo on 27 Feb 2021, with the support of C17 Globe Master and C130J transport aircrafts of Indian Air Force.

The deployment of such wide variety and huge inventory of aircrafts and helicopters of the IAF and Indian Navy is testimony to the strong bonds of friendship and close interoperability between the corresponding forces of India and Sri Lanka.

All the Indian aircraft on display are Made in India and as such represent the indigenous technical prowess of Indian research and development sector & reliability of products of India’s Defence Industry. Tejas Trainer, on display for the first time, would also afford the opportunity of independent sorties for the Sri Lanka Air Force Pilots, accompanied with the Indian Pilots whilst adhering to relevant strict health guidelines.

Indian air force transport aircraft

During the deployment, the officers from Sri Lanka Air Force and Sri Lanka Navy will also have firsthand experience onboard the Indian Navy’s Maritime Patrol Aircraft Dornier. Sri Lanka Air Force pilots and Sri Lanka Navy observers will fly along with the Indian crew. This is in continuation of the half yearly Dornier training sorties being facilitated for SLAF/ SLN.

Sri Lanka is ‘Priority One’ partner for Indian in the sphere of Defence. The assurance of India’s fullest cooperation in the field of Defence and security was recently reiterated to Sri Lanka’s leadership by the National Security Adviser of India Mr Ajit Doval during his visit to Sri Lanka for the trilateral Maritime Security Cooperation talks among India, Sri Lanka and Maldives hosted by Sri Lanka in November 2020. The participation of IAF and Indian Navy aircraft and personnel in the 70th Anniversary celebration of SLAF is indicative of the growing cooperation, camaraderie and friendship between the Armed Forces of the two nations.

New Delhi: Indicating that New Delhi has kept all options open, India has signalled to Sri Lanka that its support for the country at the United Nations Human Rights Council should not be taken for granted.

In Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council is holding its 46th regular session, which will decide the fate of a critical resolution against Sri Lanka. The first draft (also confusingly termed the ‘zero draft’) was circulated earlier this week. The vote will take place in the last couple of days of the session, ending on March 22.

The draft resolution, submitted by the Core Group comprising the United Kingdom, Germany, Malawi, Montenegro and North Macedonia, responds to a scathing report released by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on January 27.

This report was formally presented to the UN Human Rights Council on Wednesday, February 24, followed by member states offering their views over two days.

At the meeting, Sri Lankan foreign minister Dinesh Gunawardena had called on the member states to reject the draft resolution.

Indian permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, Indra Mani Pandey, significantly noted that the UN report had raised “important concerns” and aspirations of Tamils contributions to Sri Lanka’s unity and integrity.

“The assessment of the High Commissioner regarding developments nearly 12 years from the end of the conflict raises important concerns,” said Pandey at the virtual meeting.

The UN report warns that lack of accountability of Sri Lanka’s previous violations has not only increased the risk of repetition of those crimes but also highlighted “worrying trends over the past year, such as deepening impunity, increasing militarisation of governmental functions, ethno-nationalist rhetoric, and intimidation of civil society”.

India also noted that the Sri Lankan government “has articulated its position on these issues as well”. “In evaluation of both of these, we should be guided by a commitment to find a lasting and effective solution for this issue,” added Pandey.

He then noted that India’s position rested on two pillars. The first was support for Sri Lanka’s unity and territorial integrity. Commitment to Sri Lankan Tamils’ aspirations for “equality, justice, peace and dignity” was the second pillar, said the Indian diplomat.

India declared that these were “not either-or choices”.

“We believe that respecting the rights of the Tamil community, including through meaningful devolution, contributes directly to the unity and integrity of Sri Lanka. Therefore, we advocate that delivering on the legitimate aspirations of the Tamil community is in the best interests of Sri Lanka,” said Pandey.

Calling on Sri Lanka to address Tamil aspirations, India said that Colombo should take “necessary steps” through the “process of reconciliation and full implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka”.

After the UK-led core group circulated the draft resolution, the first informal consultations with other countries will be held in Geneva on March 1.

It is learnt that India has not yet taken a call on its vote in the resolution, as it awaits the resolution’s final shape. India’s statement on Thursday, however, was an indication that “all options were open”.

A clear signal was conveyed through the statement that it was not providing full support to Colombo, said sources.

Speaking to The Wire, the spokesperson of the UK-based group of Sri Lanka Tamils diaspora, Global Tamil Forum, said that he was “very happy” with India’s statement.

He even compared it with India’s explanation of the vote when New Delhi voted against Sri Lanka in a critical resolution approved by Human Rights Council in 2013.

“Although the context of this statement made by the current HC Indra Mani Panday yesterday was different from what the then HC Dilip Sinha did in 2013 when India voted in favour, the basic contents remain pretty similar. The importance is that this is possibly the strongest statement by Indian at an interactive dialogue on Sri Lanka, since the end of armed conflict in Sri Lanka,” said GTF spokesperson Suren Surendiran.

He also added that it was significant that India had underlined that resolving the aspiration of Tamils of Sri Lanka for equality, justice, peace and dignity” was fundamental to finding a permanent solution. “Note, it includes Justice!” he said.

Similarly, K. Gurupuran, attorney-at-law and formerly Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Jaffna, felt that India’s statement “referring to meeting Tamil aspirations and Sri Lanka’s sovereignty as mutually reinforcing is interesting”.

“One wonders whether India also meant the contrary, that not meeting Tamil aspirations will weaken Sri Lanka’s sovereignty,” he asked.

The draft resolution recognises a “persistent lack of accountability through domestic mechanisms” and urged the UN human rights commission to devise strategies to support “relevant judicial proceedings in Member States with competent jurisdiction”.

India has a national position against resolutions targeting a single country in multilateral bodies. But, with regard to Sri Lanka, India’s record has been varied, as domestic political factors often dictated its voting decision.

In the last 12 years, there have been seven resolutions on Sri Lanka at the UN human rights council.

India’s vote at resolutions on Sri Lanka at UNHRC

After the end of the civil war, Sri Lanka had submitted a resolution (S-11/1) at a special session in May 2009. It was passed by 29 votes in favour, with the western bloc voting against it. India had voted in favour.

Three years later, the United States brought a substantial resolution (19/2) against Sri Lanka, which was approved. For the first time, India joined 23 other states voting in favour of the resolution.

Next year in March 2013, India again voted in favour of another resolution (22/1) on Sri Lanka, drafted by the United States. Just ahead of the vote, Tamil Nadu’s main opposition party, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), had withdrawn from the Centre’s ruling alliance on the grounds that India was not doing enough to alleviate the alleged human rights violations of Sri Lankan Tamils.

In March 2014, the Human Rights Council, through resolution 25/1, authorised an investigation of war crimes committed in Sri Lanka between February 2002 and 2011. India abstained during the vote on grounds that the resolution ignored steps taken by Sri Lanka at reconciliation.

After the Mahinda Rajapaksa government’s defeat in 2015, Sri Lanka joined resolution 30/1 drafted by the Core Group that called for a domestic accountability mechanism, with the prospect of international judges. The Council adopted the resolution without a vote.

The next two resolutions in 2017 (34/1) and 2019 (40/1) were also approved by consensus.

However, there will undoubtedly be a vote on a resolution on Sri Lanka before the end of the current HRC session. This will be the first such resolution after the Rajapaksa brothers came back to power in November 2019.

During the discussion on February 24 and 25, the divide between the member states were on expected lines – China, Pakistan defending Sri Lanka, while the UK and the EU were calling on Colombo to show more accountability. However, there was no statement on behalf of the bloc of Islamic countries.

Unlike in previous years, India’s remarks did not list any steps that Sri Lanka had taken on the reconciliation process.

GTF”s Surendiran was optimistic that India might not just abstain at the voting. “I would read the last paragraph as an indication that India could potentially vote in favour of the resolution”.

Sri Lanka has made it clear that it wants a vote from India rejecting the resolution. Sri Lankan foreign secretary Jayanth Colombage told The Hindu that he hoped for “proactive” and “constructive” commitment, rather than abstention, which is “neither here, nor there.”

Gurupuran felt that the Indian statement was indicative of its “frustration” with the Sri Lankan government. “The frustration is fuelled by the cancelling of the agreement signed during the former regime handing the development of the Eastern Container Terminal of the Colombo Port to India and other developments which reflect a realignment of Sri Lanka’s foreign policy priorities favouring China,” he said.

The Jaffna-based lawyer also felt that India’s vote would be decided with an eye on elections in Tamil Nadu. India’s Election Commission announced on Friday, February 26, that the southern state of Tamil Nadu will have a single-phase polling on April 6.

“AIADMK has already started reminding voters that UPA (i.e. Congress and DMK) had failed to stop the Sri Lankan government from committing atrocities during the last phase of the war in 2009. While the Sri Lankan Tamil issue has never been a deciding factor in Tamil Nadu elections, the AIADMK and BJP will be desperate to use anything that comes their way,” he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had raised the issue of Sri Lanka during his last visit to the southern state on February 14, 2021.

Source:The Wire

Sri Lanka was to inform in writing to the General Secretariat of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) yesterday about its decision to allow the burial of Muslim Covid-19 victims, Daily Mirror learns.

The Government decided to reverse its mandatory cremation policy based on recommendations by the technical committee of experts appointed to look into it. The gazette notification giving effect to this decision was issued on Wednesday night under the signature of Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi.

The burial of bodies of Covid-19 victims are allowed in accordance with directions by the Director General of Health Services (DGHS) at a cemetery or a place authorised by him.

The OIC raised concerns about the mandatory cremation policy earlier. OIC Secretary General Yousef Al Othaimeen said at the meeting of the High level Segment of the UNHRC that the OIC is concerned with the situation of Muslims in Sri Lanka since they are denied the right to be buried.

He called for the Government to allow Muslims to bury their people dying of Covid-19 in accordance with their religious rites.there are 13 OIC countries which are members of the UNHRC this time. Their support is crucial for Sri Lanka to defeat the resolution to be moved by the core group of countries led by the United Kingdom.the zero draft of the resolution also refers to the burial issue. Some of the Islamic countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan and Iran have already spoken in favour of Sri Lanka at the UNHRC. Sri Lanka has already rejected the resolution.

Germany should push for strong resolution in Human Rights Council

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is rightly proud of Germany’s commitment to global human rights. The Foreign Office says that human rights are at the core of German foreign policy. The federal government now has the chance to fill this postulate with life when Sri Lanka is on the agenda at the next session of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Germany is a member of the “core group” of states at the Human Rights Council that presented a 2015 landmark resolution on Sri Lanka. It offered victims of abuses during the country’s long civil war the hope of truth, justice, and reconciliation, and upheld the principle of accountability for the most serious international crimes. Victims’ groups welcomed Germany’s role, and there were significant improvements in human rights, particularly freedom of expression. The shadow of fear and repression was lifted.

But the human rights situation in Sri Lanka has worsened to such an extent since Gotabaya Rajakpaksa became president in 2019 that Germany should place itself at the head of the states taking action to protect human rights there. Rajapaksa, his brother and associates are implicated in many of the war crimes and abuses committed when they were previously in government between 2005-2015.

It is therefore astonishing – and disconcerting — that there are worrying indications Germany is not playing its crucial role for justice and might even consider weakening the resolution in the interests of compromise. The recent tweetfrom the German ambassador in Colombo, in which he expressed hope that the Human Rights Council resolution will be passed by consensus with Sri Lanka’s endorsement, was particularly irritating.

That such a resolution could have a bite, and that senior government officials who are implicated in war crimes would condemn and hold themselves accountable for their own actions, would be an illusion, to say the least.

In a hard hitting new report, the UN high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, says that “Sri Lanka remains in a state of denial about the past”, and the “current trajectory sets the scene for the recurrence of the policies and practices that gave rise to grave human rights violations.” She warns of growing militarization, and calls for member states to take urgent action.

Tens of thousands of civilians were killed in the civil war between government forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which ended in 2009. Both sides committed numerous war crimes, particularly in the final months of the war. At that time Mahinda Rajapaksa was president and his brother Gotabaya was the defence secretary. They oversaw armed forces that repeatedly and indiscriminately shelled civilians and summarily executed captured LTTE fighters. Critics of the government and suspected LTTE supporters were murdered, tortured, and “disappeared” in white vans, abuses that continued even after the fighting ended. When the Rajapaksas finally lost power in the 2015 presidential election, there seemed to be an opening for change.

Now fear has returned. In November 2019 Gotabaya Rajapaksa was elected president and he appointed his brother Mahinda as prime minister.

Soon after, the government renounced its commitments under the 2015 Human Rights Council resolution. He has appointed to his administration numerous individuals who were implicated in war crimes, including his chief of defense staff, Gen. Shavendra Silva, who is banned from traveling to the United States for “his involvement, through command responsibility, in gross violations of human rights, namely extrajudicial killings.”

In March, Rajapaksa pardoned former army sergeant Sunil Ratnayake, who killed eight Tamil civilians including children, one of very few security force members ever held accountable for violations. In September, Sri Lanka told the Human Rights Council that allegations against senior military officers are “unacceptable” and without “substantive evidence.”

In October, the government amended the Constitution to remove the remaining constraints on political interference in Sri Lanka’s courts. The few officials who have sought to pursue justice are now at risk.

Instead of reconciliation and justice, the government is promoting extremist Sinhala Buddhist nationalism that discriminates against minority groups. Tamil communities in the north and east fear increasing instances of arbitrary and abusive treatment by security forces. Meanwhile, there has been an alarming rise in discrimination against Muslims, such as a ban on the burial of people who died with Covid-19, which denies the religious rights of Muslims and has no medical justification.

At its next session, beginning later this month, the Human Rights Council will face a crucial decision: whether to allow the Sri Lankan government to continue down this path, or take action to protect vulnerable Sri Lankans and uphold international law.

For the past decade the council has sought to work with Sri Lanka to promote reconciliation and accountability, but Sri Lanka has rejected those efforts. Now other measures are required. Steps to advance international accountability for international crimes will reduce the growing risk of future horrors. Germany should ensure that the warning signs are heeded, by working with partners on the core group to adopt a strong and effective resolution before the situation deteriorates further. It is crucial for Germany to step up once more to take the meaningful action that is urgently required.