On President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s 66th birthday, November 18 2011, Sarath Fonseka was sentenced to three years in prison.

In what was called the “White flag” case, he was charged with flouting Emergency Regulations by telling Frederica Jansz of the Sunday Leader newspaper that Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa had ordered surrendering Tamil Tigers leaders to be shot dead. The LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) had been fighting for almost thirty years for a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka. They were defeated in May 2009.

Fonseka was already a prisoner at Welikada Prison. Court martials had sentenced him to 30 months hard labour for engaging in political activity while in the army, and irregularities in the procurement of arms.

Death of Bin Laden

President Obama decided not to release any photographs of Bin Laden's body or video footage of the burial. He said it was important to keep photographic evidence from "floating around as incitement or a propaganda tool".

The body was prepared for burial "in conformance with Islamic precepts and practice", then placed in a weighted bag and dropped into the water from the vessel's deck. Officials said this was to avoid his grave becoming a shrine.
Leon Panetta , Director of the CIA, said that, "Obviously, under the rules of engagement, if he had in fact thrown up his hands, surrendered and didn't appear to be representing any kind of threat, then they were to capture him. But they had full authority to kill him."

Defeat of LTTE

May 19 marks the second anniversary of the defeat of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) by the armed forces of the Sri Lankan government. The LTTE had been fighting for a separate state in the north and east of the country for some thirty years at the cost of an estimated 100,000 lives.
In the closing stages of the war, international concerns were raised about the methods used by the Sri Lankan government. There were reports of large numbers of civilian casualties and accusations that the government was shelling hospitals. The government resisted international calls for a cease-fire, claiming that the LTTE would use such a hiatus, as they had done so often in the past, to regroup and rearm.

There were high hopes for the fifth annual Galle Literary Festival (GLF) held 26 to 30 January 2011. In 2010, Antony Beevor, Claire Tomalin, Gillian Slovo, Michael Frayn and Ian Rankin participated. In previous years, Edna O'Brien, Germaine Greer, Thomas Keneally, Sir Arthur C Clarke and Gore Vidal graced the festival. This year Robert McCrum, Sarah Dunant, Roger McGough, Louis de Bernières, Jung Chang, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Daljit Nagra attended.

Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and his partner, Booker Prize winner Kiran Desai, were due to attend after appearing at the Jaipur Festival. No show. The official reason was:“concerns about immigration and re-entry procedures into India.” Pamuk in an e-mail to the organisers said, “I am very sorry for, and frustrated about, this decision.” Desai said, “Nobody could be sadder than me. I love Sri Lanka and had a super time the last time I was in Galle.’” She attended in 2007 in spite of restrictive emergency legislation in place during the war against the LTTE.

The release by WikiLeaks of a batch of ‘diplomatic’ cables encouraged a lot of Sri Lankans to say: “I told you so”. Those relating to former UK Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, have caused particular smugness. When he visited Sri Lanka towards the end of the war against the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, scolded him and reminded him that Sri Lanka was no longer a British colony.

The cables reveal that Miliband exerted influence to turn down Sri Lanka’s bid to host the Commonwealth Games. Miliband did not want Sri Lanka to be given legitimacy for its actions in defeating the Tamil Tigers. Another cable revealed that Miliband supported the US’s efforts to delay an IMF loan to Sri Lanka.

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow – Tamil Grievances in Sri Lanka.

As a genuinely detached and impartial observer of the Sri Lankan political scene I get flak from all sides. I refuse to be suckered by battalions of straw men into defending a position that I do not hold – I will not adopt the position of Sinhala nationalists who claim that Tamils in Sri Lanka have never had anything to complain about. Neither will I accept that the Tamil Tigers were simply freedom fighters defending an oppressed minority.

Someone calling himself ‘Maham’ says about an article I wrote for Le Monde diplomatique: “A highly prejudiced and one-sided article. The Tamils have been continually ill-treated by the racist Sinhala majority. They never wanted to give the due political rights to the Tamils. From 1948 for about 30 years Tamils fought for their rights in a peaceful way. Take the case of the Bandaranaike — Chelvanayagam Pact and the Dudley Senanayake - Chelvanayagam Pact and what happened to them? Both the pacts were dishonoured by the Sinhala leaders. When the peaceful methods failed to achieve anything, then to save the Tamils from the Pan-Sinhala army and its terrorism, as a last resort the Tamil youths took up arms.”

Tamil Diaspora

The LTTE was mainly dependent for funding in its early days on robberies and extortion. Even before 1983, the Tigers were able to procure arms from funds provided from individuals abroad as is evidenced by seizures of shipment by the Egyptian and Greek authorities. Later, the LTTE became expert at generating funds from a Tamil diaspora of about 80 million spread over 50 countries who were linked by the internet.

Soon after the July 1983 events, K Balasekeram, a radiographer working in a London hospital, convened a meeting of the Eelam Solidarity Campaign. His policy was to socialise the Tamils into donating a small amount of money every month. London became a hub of LTTE financing.

The rise of Tamil separatist militancy.

Most Tamil militant groups began life as student organisations. The Tamil Students League was formed in 1970 by Ponnuthurai Satvaseelan. The Tamil Youth League was founded in 1973. The General Union of Eelam Students was founded in London and gave birth to the Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students from which split the Eelam Peoples Revolutionary Front which in turn became the Eelam Peoples Democratic Party (EPDP) which currently has one of its members, Douglas Devenanda as a government minister. The EPDP has a paramilitary wing.
Before 1987, India provided training for the armed militant groups, the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO) and People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE).

I have just returned home after celebrating the 86th birthday of possibly the nicest man in Sri Lanka (or anywhere else). All the time we were at his home, the phone rang endlessly as people rang to give their birthday wishes. Calls came from all over Sri Lanka and also USA, UK, Australia, Canada, Malaysia, South Africa, Philippines and Morocco. He is now retired, but during his working life he was a senior manager in the tea plantation business, working his way up from being a young “creeper”, as juniors in the tea business are called. Fifty years ago, he cut the road that leads from the main A5 to the bungalow which is now our home. Even today, he is honored and revered in the business and is often invited to conferences and seminars to share his wisdom with the young Sinhalese managers who run the industry now.

General Election, April 8 2010

On April 8, Sri Lankans went to the polls to elect a new parliament. This was the first general election since the defeat of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) in May 2009. It was the first general election in almost thirty years which effectively covered the whole nation.

In terms of seats won it was a resounding victory for the governing coalition (main party the SLFP – Sri Lanka Freedom Party) headed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The UPFA (United People’s Freedom Alliance) are certain of 144 seats (some results are still awaited as I write); the main opposition coalition the UNF (United National Front) won 46 seats; the DNA (Democratic National Alliance) consisting of a rump of the Marxist JVP (People’s Liberation Front) and supporters of retired general Sarath Fonseka won five seats. Fonseka himself won a seat in a Colombo ward.

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Not Mr Clean, He’s Mr Bean – Sri Lanka Chooses a President

Upali the driver is confused. He is feeling like the child of a broken marriage, torn between two warring parents. He does not have much in the way of material comforts but he is proud to be a citizen of Sri Lanka and secure in his sense of Buddhist Sinhala identity. He feels no acrimony for those of other ethnic groups or religions, although he mocks the pretensions of some who go abroad to work and come back speaking English or Arabic. He is a poor man, but he is comfortable with what he is. Without triumphalism he rejoices that his country now appears to be at peace. A national flag flies above his corrugated iron roof. In his humble but neat living room two portraits are equally honoured – President Mahinda Rajapaksa and General Sarath Fonseka. For Upali, these two men were the saviours of his motherland. Together they ended the thirty-year reign of terror of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Upali does not quite know how to cope with the news that his two heroes seem to have become enemies.

One can detect something of a siege mentality in Sri Lanka. There is a strong feeling that, after winning a long and brutal war, the country’s independence is threatened by unfair criticism from abroad. An important element in this is in the complex relationship with INGOs (International Non-governmental Organizations).

Susantha Goonatilake called his book on foreign-funded NGOs in Sri Lanka Recolonization.

In his conclusion he wrote: “Sri Lankan NGOs emerged in the late 1970s when the then government cracked down on democracy, transparency and accountability and killed locally-grown civil society… Sri Lanka thus became a partial NGO franchise state, with the NGOs attempting to erode the country’s sovereignty …The NGOs are now being squeezed and widely criticised, not only by the media, but also through massive street protests and countrywide posters. The coming years will see an outcome of the struggle between real civil society and foreign-funded NGOs. This struggle, which is partly between a reconciliation agenda and local voices, echoes Sri Lanka’s 500-year-old struggle with western colonial powers.”

B Lynn Pascoe, Under Secretary of the United Nations for Political Affairs, visited the IDP camps and met President Rajapaksa and his ministers.

Commenting on his visit to the north, Mr. Pascoe stated that he was “impressed by the work done by the Army, the demining teams, the UN staff and the civil society” and that the team also witnessed the rehabilitation work that was underway. He also stated that in Jaffna, they were able to feel that the people were looking forward to getting more opportunities and that there was a feeling that a “whole era was waiting for them”.

“In the Mannar area, we witnessed crews repairing roads and a school, as well as construction work on a large water reservoir to serve some 2,500 families slated to be resettled next week. We saw work being done in preparing rice fields for planting before the monsoons. We received a briefing and demonstration by the military on progress in clearing mines out of the Mannar Rice Bowl region.

RAIN

When I first moved to Sri Lanka from Ireland some seven years ago, a friend wrote to me asking if I missed the Cork rain. I replied that indeed I did – I missed its moderation. My first impression was that the rainy season in my new home lasted 13 months every year. I realise now that I was being hyperbolic but this is the first August that torrential rain has not been coming through my roof. A few years ago, there was one occasion when I woke up at about three in the morning to watch my slippers floating past me on the tide.

I am not being flippant here, merely trying to feel some empathy for those in the IDP camps in the north. How would I feel being in a tent in such weather? I spent a weekend in a tent in a sea of mud at the Glastonbury festival but I knew when it would end and there was the compensation of seeing Johnny Cash, Jackson Browne and Dwight Yoakam, among others, perform.

IDP camps in Sri Lanka

The controversy over refugee camps in Sri Lanka continues.
On August 8, Amnesty International published a document calling on the Sri Lankan government to ensure:
• Right to liberty and freedom of movement
• Systematic and transparent registration for each displaced person
• Family reunification
• Civilian administration & humanitarian access
Conditions in the camps
Despite the claims of human rights groups and vocal sections of the Tamil diaspora, there has been sufficient access to the camps for a great number of eye-witness reports to be published.

Sri Lanka’s displaced people Part 1
Concentration camps or welfare camps?

Introduction

Whenever I write about the situation in Sri Lanka, I try to approach the subject in a calm and rational manner. My only bias is in favor of this beautiful country, which I have chosen as my home, achieving the peace and harmony that has eluded it for so long. In spite of, or perhaps because of, my even-handed approach, comments on my articles tend to fall into three categories.

The very same article (whose main theme was western ignorance and hypocrisy) drew comments from Sri Lankans along these lines:
• Most commended me for my professional and unbiased approach.
• Some accused me of bigotry against Tamils and of being in the pay of the government.
• Others accused me of being an LTTE propagandist because I mentioned discrimination against Tamils as a possible factor in thirty years of mayhem.

Former Chief Justice, Sarath N. Silva, who is Sinhalese, fears that the continuing confinement of Tamils in camps in the north may lay the foundation for a new war, since comparable discrimination against and persecution of Tamil civilians played a major role in starting the war which has just ended. Silva said the confinement of civilians in these camps insults the soldiers who risked, and in many cases lost, their lives to free the civilians from the LTTE, and makes a mockery of celebrations of the end of the war.

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In his article in The Atlantic dated 1 July 2009 entitled To Catch a Tiger, Robert D Kaplan acknowledged the success of the Sri Lankan government in defeating the Tamil Tigers

Kaplan admits that tiny, cash-strapped Sri Lanka, generally thought of as “third world” or “developing”, has succeeded where the mighty USA has failed. The man who dominated Sri Lankan life for the worse for thirty years, Vellupillai Prabakharan, leader of the Tamil Tigers, is dead, while Osama Bin Laden is still living, a free man.

Kaplan asks if the US can learn from Sri Lanka’s success but answers: