A spokesman for Sri Lankan President Mahendra Rajapakse described the heavy focus on the issue in the lead-up to Friday’s gathering of leaders from the 54-nation Commonwealth bloc in the Australian city of Perth as “unfair”.

“This is the well-oiled propaganda machinery of the LTTE rump,” spokesman Bandula Jayasekera told the ABC news network, in reference to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and its diaspora overseas.

Rajapakse also repeated at a Commonwealth business forum in Perth on Thursday his government’s insistence that it crushed a “terrorist” organisation when defeating the Tamil Tigers.

“An end to terrorist violence was absolutely essential to move the country forward along the path of economic and social development,” Rajapakse said.

The next CHOGM summit is due to be held in Colombo in 2013, and Amnesty International chief Salil Shetty criticised Commonwealth nations Thursday for allowing Sri Lanka to have hosting rights with the war crimes issue unresolved.

First of all, all sensible readers should accept the fact that, “There Are No Tamil Areas” in the Island of Sri Lanka.

The settlers of Tamil Ghettos should be given an opportunity and a fresh start to integrate with the Sinhala.

The Sinhala citizens are free to move into any part of the Island of Sri Lanka to settle and raise their families.

I for one, would support and seek a Parliamentary support to finance less affluent Sinhala to settle in areas to make up the proportion of Sinhala to achieve a uniform demographic balance in the Island, and destroy the “taboo” or the “myth” of “Tamil Areas”.

The Tamil Areas, in fact, are in Tamil Nadu, India. And the rest of the areas occupied by the Tamils in Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, Australia, Scandinavia, France, Italy, Switzerland, UK, USA and indeed in Sri Lanka, are facilitated by kind courtesy of the respective democratic governments.

One hardly finds many immigrant Tamils in Russia, North Korea, China, or in any of the Arab World countries. One might ask, WHY?

No reader has complained about the Invasion of Tamils into Sri Lanka’s areas predominantly occupied by Sinhala for over two millenium.

The Sinhala having suffered a three decade terror campaign by Tamil Terrorist LTTE, was given a breath of fresh air, by the leadership of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Having saved the Tamil citizens in the process, many of them illegal immigrants from Tamil Nadu, President Rajapaksa went on to save, rehabilitate and rehouse them in the Land of Sinhala, at a cost which the Sinhala citizens have to subsidize.

The Tamil agitators as well as the Indian government should now leave the problems of rehabilitation and settlement to the Sri Lankan government which “carries the can” and the financial burden.

The Sri Lankan government has conducted itself in an admirable manner, led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa acting in the manner of a Global Statesman!

Instead of “barking at the Moon” or “crying over spilt milk” or feeling sorry for the leading Tamil Terrorism benefactor Raj Rajasingham getting eleven years eating “porrige” in an American jail, why not “bury the hatchet” and Start the Process of Nomination of President Mahinda Rajapaksa for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize?

Prof. Hudson McLean

Athureliya Rathana Thero, a Buddhist monk legislator in the government told reporters that the research was carried out at a Malaysian laboratory.

Sri Lankan university academic Channa Jayasumana alongside with Thero said cyanide was found in pesticides imported from Germany, Switzerland and Europe.

“These had high content of arsenic, mercury and cyanide and can have damaging side effects such as sensory impairment, disturbed sensations, lack of coordination, kidney dysfunction, damage to the skin and infertility,” Jayasumana told reporters.

Thero, requesting the Sri Lankan government to ban the import of the pesticides, said the issue will be raised in parliament soon with the support of the opposition.

A group comprising Sri Lankan chemists, pharmacologists, botanists, medical doctors and forensic specialists said that last month the arsenic poisoning was very likely linked to a mystery kidney disease which had killed 20,000 farmers in Sri Lanka in the past 20 years.

The laboratory tests were carried out by Consolidated Laboratory (M) SDN. BID, 2-3 Bedford Business Park Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. The Consolidated Laboratory (M) SDN. BID is an accredited laboratory by MS.ISO/IEC 17025 the requirement for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories. Read full article >>

Eventually, the ambit of AI’s interests widened to include general human rights including the problem of child soldiers, the death penalty, and abortion rights. The latter was adopted only in 2007, to the fury of the Catholic Church which was a traditional supporter of AI. The question needs to be asked as to why abortion was given a cold shoulder by AI up until that time. Was this right suppressed in order to please the Catholic Church? And what other issues have been ignored? There has been criticism that the Israeli violations of human rights were ignored by AI, although recent tussles with Israeli authorities shows that that possible bias has now been corrected.

AI admits to focusing on democratic governments in its criticism because they are more prone to bending under public pressure. Famously, the Americans rejected AI criticism of its behaviour at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. The Israelis piled into AI for ‘the pattern of biased, prejudiced, bigoted, one-sided judgments’. They have a point because, by attacking democracies for the sake of convenience, AI exempts terrorist organizations that cause democracies to engage in conflict in the first place. Compared to the lashings delivered to Sri Lanka by AI, the Tamil Tigers have got off easily. Sri Lanka can take comfort in ‘Moynihan’s Law’ where the late US senator, a champion of human rights, stated that the number of complaints about a nation’s violations of human rights is inversely proportional to actual violations.

Unlike well-funded and influential governments like those of the US and of Israel, the government of Sri Lanka is poor and is ill-equipped to handle the negative publicity that comes with being blackballed by organizations such as AI. Indeed, Sri Lanka is even at a disadvantage to handle the well-financed propaganda of the LTTE; the country has to look after its people with the little money it has. Therefore, when AI and competing groups like HRW attack poor Sri Lanka, the perception is widely held by Sri Lankans that they are part of a cruel conspiracy by Western powers to intimidate and pressure weak countries. AI’s values also seem to have been corrupted by the money grubbing that’s part of the NGO business.

The ‘White Ball’ campaign that the geniuses at AI’s Sri Lanka desk dreamed up for the Cricket World Cup in 2007 infuriated Sri Lankans in a country where cricket is religion. The campaign was supposed to highlight Sri Lanka’s ‘human rights violations’ in its fight against the Tamil Tigers but what it did in the Caribbean was to exert unfair pressure on innocent Sri Lankan cricket players. Where was AI’s sound and fury against the Brits and Australians whose governments were part and parcel of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ committing war crimes in Iraq? AI’s stock in Sri Lanka plummeted and has been in the tank ever since. This website tallies AI’s coverage of Sri Lanka.

source: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL WATCH

The protesters condemned the controversial documentary as malicious and accused the Channel 4 TV of inciting racial hatred between Sri Lankan communities in the UK, including the younger generations, and thereby playing into the hands of separatist forces operational outside Sri Lanka. They shouted slogans charging that the Channel 4 TV is engaged in a well-orchestrated campaign to vilify Sri Lanka. Many participants had their own stories of the damage caused to the image of the country by this Channel 4 documentary, and how it has affected their friendships with members of other communities. They expressed outrage that the film lacked any sense of balance or objectivity.

The protestors also questioned the integrity of some Channel 4 journalists whose personal grudges against Sri Lanka are on record, and urged the British law enforcement authorities to keep an eye on the money flows behind such large-scale media operations, particularly at a time when the British media is shaken by despicable incidents of unethical journalism.

Waving Sri Lankan and British flags the protestors displayed many banners urging the Channel 4 TV not to abuse media freedom in Britain in such a biased manner. They denounced the Channel 4 TV’s style of journalism – collating video and still frames posted in pro-LTTE websites to form “a documentary” and presenting them to a largely an unsuspecting audience using a female LTTE activist to narrate, with no evidence in support of her own emotion-stirring claims. The protestors questioned the Channel 4 TV as to why it did not see the fact that the very army it accuses of killing civilians has sacrificed the lives of its own members to save about 300, 000 civilians trapped by the LTTE terrorists. They accused the Channel 4 TV of acting according to a script to fit a pre-meditated agenda citing Channel 4 TV has disregarded even the fact that the army did not kill but captured more than 11, 000 LTTE cadres alive.

The demonstration was held in front of the Channel 4 TV station in London, and leaflets were distributed to many by-passers. In s solid show of unity the protestors weathered intermittent but heavy rains for full four hours.

Sri Lankans in the UK

After the Minister Kadiragamar’s assassination, Sri Lankan government urged the EU to take stern action on LTTE organization. When they observe the LTTE actions for last 22 years, UN can take a firm and perfect decision, which will benefit all Sri Lankans irrespective of races. With the renowned history of the LTTE for assassinations, attacks, shooting of democratic politics and security personnel, child abductions, child conscription EU can easily come to a decision to nominate LTTE organization as an illegal Terrorist organization.

Although combatants in Sri Lanka’s long-standing civil war have denied using child soldiers, in reality it is other way round, the report has said.

“Government soldiers have often described how they are forced to confront Tiger battalions of women, teenage girls and boys as young as ten years old,” quoting the report, AFP said.

“In at least one instance, they claimed that the Tigers attacked in the dark and then pulled back…leaving wounded boys and girls lying in no-man’s land, crying for help,” the report said.