Category: Featured Headlines

A large meeting will be held soon in Vatican City with the participation of His Holiness Pope Francis, Archbishop of Colombo His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, and Sri Lankans living in European countries, where bringing justice to the victims of the Easter Sunday terror attacks of 21 April 2019 will be discussed.

Well-placed sources who spoke to The Morning yesterday (6) said that this meeting would not take place during the Archbishop’s ongoing visit to Vatican City, but will probably be scheduled after April and that Sri Lankans of all faiths in Italy and nearby countries are expected to attend the meeting.

“During the Cardinal’s recent visit to the Vatican, a group of Sri Lankans there had organised a discussion, but he did not attend. Instead, he plans to meet Sri Lankans with the Pope in the near future. The exact date of the meeting is yet to be determined, but it would most likely be after April,” the sources said.

The Colombo Archbishop met with Pope Francis on 28 February at the Vatican, and the Easter Sunday terror attacks and related investigations were discussed during the said meeting.

“We have exhausted all options within Sri Lanka to find justice. Now we are discussing all avenues through which we can find justice internationally. Our last remaining solution was to seek assistance from the international community. This is not because we do not love our country. The Archbishop is meeting the Pope after two years and he is especially focusing on informing him that we need help from the international community to seek justice for the victims of the Easter Sunday terror attacks,” National Catholic Social Communication Centre Director Rev. Cyril Gamini Fernando said at a press conference held on the same day.

Following the meeting with the Pope, Cardinal Ranjith met United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet in Geneva, Switzerland and discussed revealing the truth behind the Easter Sunday terror attacks and bringing justice to the victims on 2 March in an approximately 45-minute discussion.

“As we have informed earlier, we have tried all possible options to reveal the truth behind the Easter Sunday terror attacks and failing that, we have gone to the international community to request help from them to reveal the truth. Therefore, as a first step, the Archbishop met with the Pope and told him all about the attacks. He requested him to mediate in order to get the truth revealed. As a second step, the Archbishop met Bachelet and held discussions on revealing the truth behind the terror attacks and bringing justice to the victims,” Colombo Archdiocese Auxiliary Bishop Rev. J.D. Anthony said in a statement issued on 2 March.

Claiming that all attempts made by the Catholic church to obtain justice for Easter Sunday terror attacks within the country have failed, Cardinal Ranjith last month said that they were currently exploring the possibilities to reach out to the international community, including the UN, seeking justice for the said terror attacks.

Pointing out that they, as the Catholic church, have links all over the world, the Archbishop said that they would also try to influence some pertinent and powerful countries that are in contact with the church. In addition, he said that in case they would be reaching out to the international community, such efforts would also be supported by his fellow cardinals around the world.

On 21 April 2019, Easter Sunday, three churches (St. Sebastian’s Church in Katuwapitiya, St. Anthony’s Church in Kochchikade, and Zion Church in Batticaloa) and three luxury hotels in Colombo (Cinnamon Grand Colombo, The Kingsbury Colombo, and Shangri-La Colombo) were targeted in a series of co-ordinated suicide bombings. Later that day, another two bomb explosions took place at a house in Dematagoda and the Tropical Inn Lodge in Dehiwala. A total of 269 people excluding the bombers were killed in the bombings, including about 45 foreign nationals, while at least 500 were injured.

Sixteen parliamentarians from 10 political parties which form the governing alliance plan to sit independently in the House from next week, The Sunday Morning reliably learns.

The decision to sit independently was reached during a 10-party party leaders’ meeting held last Friday (4), a leader of a dissident group told The Sunday Morning.

Accordingly, the group of 16 will sit separately from the Government MPs, but will remain on the Government side of the House.

It is also learnt that the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), which has been raising a dissenting voice over the last year, will not join this move.

The move comes in the wake of last week’s Cabinet reshuffle, where President Gotabaya Rajapaksa sacked two key Cabinet Ministers – National Freedom Front (NFF) Leader Wimal Weerawansa and Pivithuru Hela Urumaya (PHU) Leader Udaya Gammanpila – who had criticised Government policies and called for a change in policy direction to avert a further crisis.

The ‘interactive dialogue’ on Sri Lanka at the Human Rights Council in Geneva will end on Monday and the focus will then shift to its sessions in September when a new resolution is likely.

Monday’s continuation for less than an hour is the result of the Council making provision for an urgent debate on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

UN Human Rights High Commissioner Michele Bachelet, who commented on her report on Sri Lanka that was released earlier, said “the past year has seen further obstruction and setbacks to accountability. Victims and their families continue to be denied truth and justice.”

The session on Sri Lanka was delayed and resultantly shortened. It was the because of the Council conducting an urgent debate on the situation in Ukraine.

Foreign Minister, G.L. Peiris, made a scathing attack saying that

the “so called evidence gathering mechanism” is deeply flawed procedure and unacceptable. He said that the Report on Sri Lanka is “intolerably intrusive character, impinging as it does no core functions and responsibilities of organs of Sri Lankan state, overwhelmingly mandated by the people at successive elections.”

In making those highly critical remarks, Foreign Minister Peiris has overlooked the fact that the Human Rights High Commissioner is only carrying out a mandate given to her by the Human Rights Council.

Diplomats from countries friendly with Sri Lanka said that the opportunity could have been better used to brief member, observer countries and NGOs who are drivers of the action against Sri Lanka. “This approach will make it difficult to help Sri Lanka. For instance, the EU countries awaited a briefing on amendments to the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) with the future of GSP plus hanging in the balance,” said one diplomat.

A statement on behalf of the core group was made by Rita French, United Kingdom’s Global Ambassador for Human Rights and Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations. She expressed concern that surveillance and intimidation of civil society members and journalists continues.

The core group is made up of Canada, Germany, North Montenegro, Malawi, Montenegro, United Kingdom, and the United States.

India tells Lanka: Address “legitimate aspirations of Tamils”

India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva this week called on Sri Lanka to address the “legitimate aspirations of the Tamil community” in Sri Lanka.

The envoy, Indra Mani Pandey, did not elaborate what they were, except to say they included carrying forward the process of reconciliation and implementing the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.

“India believes it is in Sri Lanka’s own interest that the expectations of Tamils in Sri Lanka for equality, justice, peace and dignity, within a united Sri Lanka are fulfilled,” Mr. Pandey added.

The Indian delegation supported the UN High Commissioner’s report saying; “The report raises important concerns on promoting, reconciliation, accountability, and human rights in Sri Lanka”. India also called for early Provincial Council elections in Sri Lanka.

The government of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has a meagre 10% approval rating little over 2 years into his term, according to a poll by Verité Research.

The Colombo based think-tank recently launched a Gallup style “Mood of the Nation” poll in Sri Lanka to assess approval, satisfaction and confidence in relation to the government, the country and the economy.

Gallup is the most reputed polling organisation in the world. It runs a regular “Mood of the Nation” poll in the United States. Accordingly, Verité Research has adapted that same poll and scoring methodology to follow the pulse of the people in Sri Lanka.

The poll is based on an island wide nationally representative sample of responses from 1,021 Sri Lankan adults, conducted in January 2022. The sample and methodology were designed to ensure a maximum error margin of under 3% at a 95% confidence interval. The polling partner was Vanguard Survey (Pvt) Ltd.

Government approval rating | 10%

To the question, “Do you approve or disapprove of the way the current government is working?” only 10% said they approve.

Sri Lanka satisfaction | 6%

To the question, “In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in Sri Lanka?” only 6% said they were satisfied.

Economic confidence | negative (-) 82.96

Multiple choice questions on the condition and trajectory of the economy are used to generate an economic confidence score. The score can range from negative (-) 100 to positive (+) 100. A score above zero means more people see the economic conditions positively rather than negatively.

If everyone thinks the economy is in either excellent or good conditions, and everyone also thinks it is getting better the score will be positive (+) 100. If everyone thinks that the economy is in a poor condition, and everyone also thinks it is getting worse, the score will be a negative (-) 100.

The score is a negative (-) 83 because the average of those who thought the economy was in a poor condition, and those who thought it was getting worse, was 83%.

India on Friday called upon Sri Lanka to take “necessary steps” to address the “legitimate aspirations” of the Tamil community, while reiterating its earlier stance that it is in Sri Lanka’s “own interest that the expectations of Tamils in Sri Lanka for equality, justice, peace and dignity, within a united Sri Lanka, are fulfilled”.

Delivering a statement in the interactive dialogue segment on the U.N. Human Rights chief’s latest report on Sri Lanka, Ambassador Indramani Pandey, Permanent Representative of India told the Human Rights Council in Geneva that, “As its friend and immediate neighbour, India has consistently called upon Sri Lanka to fulfil its commitments on addressing the issues related to protecting the interest of Tamils in Sri Lanka.” While making a similar intervention last year, India abstained from voting on the resolution on Sri Lanka. There is no resolution or vote on Sri Lanka this year.

Calling for continued engagement by the Government of Sri Lanka with the international community, India on Friday noted that High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet’s recent report raises “important concerns” on promoting, reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka.

The written report, among other observations, highlighted “setbacks to accountability for past human rights violations and the recognition of victims’ rights”, and the failure of transitional justice mechanisms to win the confidence of victims affected by the civil war that ended in 2009.

In her statement to the Council on Friday, Ms. Bachelet said, “Regrettably, the past year has also seen further obstruction and setbacks to accountability. Victims and their families continue to be denied truth and justice.”

“Two years after the expression of commitments to pursue an “inclusive, domestically designed and executed reconciliation and accountability process” before this Council, the Government has still not produced a credible roadmap on transitional justice towards accountability and reconciliation,” the High Commissioner noted, adding that “as long as impunity prevails, Sri Lanka will not achieve genuine reconciliation and sustainable peace”.

Tamil concerns

India’s statement in response focussed on long-pending concerns of Tamils and the need for power devolution. “We call upon Sri Lanka to take the necessary steps to address the legitimate aspirations of the Tamil community, including by carrying forward the process of reconciliation and the implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka, to ensure that the fundamental freedoms and human rights of all its citizens are fully protected,” Ambassador Pandey said. India would “continue to urge” the Sri Lankan Government for the early conduct of elections to the Provincial Councils in keeping with its commitment to devolution of power, he said.

What is the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution, and why is it contentious?

The five-year terms of all nine Provincial Councils in Sri Lanka expired in 2018 and 2019. There is no official word on provincial polls from the Government, which is cash-strapped and growing increasingly unpopular in the wake of an unprecedented economic crisis, reflecting in fuel shortage and prolonged power cuts.

Thrust on 13 A and provincial polls

India’s emphasis on the 13th Amendment, which followed the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987 and assured a measure of devolution, comes weeks after senior Tamil parliamentarians wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking his intervention in securing a durable political solution for Sri Lanka’s historic Tamil question.

Significantly, the signatories to the letter pointed to limits of the 13th Amendment, especially within a Unitary Constitution, and underscored their commitment to a political solution that goes beyond the Amendment, and is based on a federal structure that recognises Tamils’ “right to self-determination”.

Now that the draft of High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet’s mandatory bi-annual report to the UNHRC council is doing the rounds, the Sri Lankan Tamil (SLT) polity should be wondering as to what she meant by describing the government-proposed amendments to the dreaded Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) as an ‘important initial step’. Even otherwise, High Commissioner Bachelet’s report this time does not bark, leave alone bite, possibly indicative of an easy time for the government through the fixe weeks of council discussions and a possible new resolution and vote.

“…we have very serious issues… the militarization, the ethno-religious nationalism, the continued lack of accountability. And you couple that with a pattern of surveillance and harassment of those who try to speak out — civil society organizations, human rights defenders, journalists — and it is a recipe for further human rights violations,” high commissioner’s spokeswoman, Ravina Shamdasani, said. At the same time, she also said that the government had shown some willingness to initiate reforms, but there little to address past human rights violations or redress the harm done to victims. At least, she was not as specific and sharp as the high commissioner’s report was expected to be.

However, High Commissioner Bachelet has said enough in one sentence to provoke the government enough, but without giving any real hope to the victims, which now includes not only the SLT community and their ‘war victims’, but being expanded to include every other allegation of human rights violations in the country. As her office should have anticipated, Foreign Secretary Adm Jayanth Colombage (retd), has promptly declared that the government would not allow the high commissioner’s office to set up an evidence-gathering mechanism in the country. “It is against the UN mandate,’ he asserted, adding that the government could not allow one even otherwise as a domestic mechanism for the purpose was now taking shape.

Dramatic but to no end

All of it should now make the SLT community and polity thinking – as to the uselessness of their current call for international support on multiple fronts, all pertaining to their core ethnic concerns. Already, the TNA has launched a signature campaign for the wholesale withdrawal of the PTA, including the amendments, and party and allied Tamil MPs staged a surprise protest outside the President’s Secretariat, seeking an appointment with incumbent Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Again, to no avail.

It is thus time for the Tamil polity to sit back, look back and then decide the future course. For instance, they need to address the simple question, if the wholesale rescinding of PTA alone would suffice, or they instead needed iron-clad, enforceable guarantees that multiple arms of the Sri Lankan State would not be used to harass them illegally, as has been the case all along.

With the likes of Justice C V Wigneswaran and President’s Counsel M A Sumanthiran among them, the Tamil polity should actually be thinking about such instrumentalities. They can independently assess if they still wanted the PTA to stay or go, as nations across the world are under compulsion to have one of their own, given the existing circumstances and emerging apprehensions. The SLT may get little help and support from the international community for the wholesale deletion of PTA, precisely for this reason – and the latter would be couching their reservations in such pious terms, nothing more.

Delayed, welcome initiative

Then, there is the Sumanthiran initiative to bring together all Opposition parties to take on the government on the economic front. As a concept, it is a delayed yet welcome initiative. As a tactic, the choice of TNA, and through the TNA, Sumanthiran, a post-war Tamil politician, makes sense. Not for the latter reason, but because the TNA as the second largest party in the Opposition after the SJB alone is capable of bringing the party and its estranged and diminished UNP together, to the same table. Of course, the JVP too participated in the first round of what could be described as the all-Opposition talks.

Even those non-Sinhala parties of the Muslim and the Upcountry Tamil stocks have no real political issues viz the TNA, for them to turn down an invitation for such a conclave. Needless to say, they have produced a document for the government to consider – which it would do only in breach, as always. This has been the bane of the nation whichever party is in power.

But then, the TNA too has to realise that despite being around in national politics and international interactions for decades, the Tamil polity does not have a comprehensive idea about regional, national and international economy – which is the real driving force in all three segments. Maybe, a bunch of economists from outside, or an economic council to advise chief minister Wigneswaran when he held the post in the Tamil Northern Province could have turned out things better for the people and the party, the TNA at the time.

It does not stop there. Through the four-plus years of a friendly and eternally-dependent Government of National Unity (GNU), the TNA and the anti-TNA sections of the Tamil polity wasted all time and opportunity to reach out to the Sinhala South, to the last village. Barring a low-profile meeting that TNA boss R Sampanthan had with the Buddhist prelates in Kandy, nothing came of what was otherwise seen as a TNA/Tamil out-reach to the majority community.

Cataclysmic changes

Third and equally important, the TNA and the rest of the Tamil polity may have to look at a future without their past haunting them and the rest of the nation and the rest of the world. It is a reality that they cannot escape from, as a new generation of Tamils born away from the horrors of war won’t be able to relate to the past as their present generation does.

This could mean, new ideas, new concepts and new ideologies may prosper without anyone knowing and acknowledging. The chances are that the present generation is often caught napping at such cataclysmic changes to their beliefs and politics, on the one hand and the passage of time taking with it the tall leaders from their midst, one after another.

Deciding factor

Unlike the Sinhala parties the SLT, Muslim and the Upcountry Tamil polity to a lesser extent has not allowed fresh grass to grow under the foot of the present generation. That’s how the socio-political changes that they are going to face in the next five or ten years is going to be catastrophic to their current faith in the eternity of their past ideology.

They all need only to look around the neighbourhood and elsewhere in the democratic world to know how a new generation throws up a disturbing ideology and methodology, which overshadows the status quo and demolishes the same, oftentimes effortlessly. The JVP, the LTTE and the rest of the Tamil youth militancy from the past are products of such a demographic dynamic that their own older generation did not comprehend enough and in time.

Maybe, it is thus time for the TNA, for instance, to take the initiative not only for bringing together all of the SLT polity, but also attempt to form a forum of all minority interests. There had been occasions in the past decade-plus when Tamil-speaking parliamentarians cutting across ethnic and political divides added up to 50, if not more, in a House of 225. That is saying a lot.

Include the Catholics under Colombo Archbishop Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith now, and you will have over 30 per cent of the nation’s voters. In a good election for the presidency, it translates as the ‘deciding factor’, provided they all stick together, or most of them stick together. And in a good parliament election again, they will decide who will be prime minister.

In turn, they can tell the government to have the kind of Constitution and laws and enforcement that the nation deserves and their own constituencies demand. The PTA would then be passe. Why UNHRC, the government and Parliament nearer home could then be made to act!