India committed to SL security: Singh

The Indian government and the military were fully committed to Sri Lanka’s security and to further strengthening co-operation between the two countries, visiting Indian Chief of Army Staff General Bikram Singh said yesterday.

General Singh made this comment when he met President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the Presidential Secretariat yesterday morning, a statement from the President’s Office said.Noting that the Sri Lankan security forces have acquired vast strategic knowledge and experience, Gen. Singh praised Sri Lankan soldiers for their discipline, competencies and outstanding skills and said it would be useful for both countries to learn from each other.

President Rajapaksa thanked India for its support extended to Sri Lanka during the war and said the task would have been much more difficult if not for India’s help.

During the discussion, President Rajapaksa also brought up the issue of Indian fishermen fishing in Sri Lankan waters to which Gen. Singh responded by affirming that a strong message has been conveyed to officials of the State of Tamil Nadu to take the necessary measures to control the situation.

While thanking the Sri Lankan government for constructing the monument commemorating the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), Gen. Singh promised to assist Sri Lanka in meeting the training requirements of the security forces.

Maj. Gen. Rajeev Tewari and the Defense Attaché of the Indian High Commission in Sri Lanka Capt. Sumith Kapoor joined Gen. Singh for the discussion while Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunga and Sri Lanka’s Army Commander Jagath Jayasuriya were also present.

India remains preferred destination for training of SL military

While stating that India remains the preferred destination for training of Sri Lankan officers, an Indian TV channel NDTV said that 870 Sri Lankan military officers are undergoing training in India in the current year (2012-13).

“In 2011-12 for instance, 820 Sri Lankans undertook training in Indian Military Establishments. In the current year (2012-13), 870 officers are undergoing training in India. This includes two senior officers doing the prestigious National Defence College (NDSC) course in New Delhi,” it said.

Following is the full article

As Indian Army Chief General Bikram Singh lands in Colombo later today, he is certain to hear from his hosts about many unfulfilled aspects of Indo-Sri Lanka Defence Cooperation.

One of the unfinished agendas between India and Sri Lanka is a formal Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA), in discussion between the two countries since 2003.

Top Defence sources in both the capitals say most aspects of a formal pact have been agreed upon but domestic compulsions on either side have prevented the final signing of the DCA.
The lack of a formal defence cooperation pact has however not prevented the two countries from furthering their defence ties, opposition in Tamil Nadu to the presence of Sri Lankan military personnel in various Indian training institutions notwithstanding.

Read Full Article : http://warcrimesrilanka.blogspot.com/p/india-remains-preferred-destination-for.html

The UN’s plan for making white people feel better

By Kath Noble

Last week I felt like I had been transported back in time. We were back in those awful first six months of 2009, when I was by turns horrified at the plight of the people caught up in the fighting in the Vanni and disgusted with the way in which the international community was responding.

Of course, we all wanted to stop the war. I hate violence. But as I argued then and continue to believe, at that point, the only way the war was going to stop was with the defeat of the LTTE. Prabhakaran would not give up on Eelam. He was going to continue his vicious campaign against the Sri Lankan state and all its communities until he was caught or killed. Our task, therefore, was to minimise the damage. We had to try to ensure that it was done with as little death and destruction as possible.


Read more : http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=66521

Israel ready to widen Gaza operations, says Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the country's military is prepared to extend its operation against Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

His comments came after the head of the military wing of Hamas, Ahmed Said Khalil al-Jabari, was killed during Israeli air strikes on the territory.

These followed a wave of rocket attacks against Israel from Gaza.

Three Palestinian militants were killed fresh Israeli strikes on Thursday.

More rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel overnight, but Jon Donnison in Gaza City says so far the violence does not appear on the same scale as the last Gaza War almost four years ago when hundreds of Palestinians were killed on the first day of Israel's operation.

"We've sent a clear message to Hamas and to other terrorist organisations," Mr Netanyahu said in a televised address on Wednesday evening.

"And if there is a need, the Israeli Defence Forces are prepared to widen the operation. We will continue to do everything to defend our citizens.

"We encourage Israel to continue to take every effort to avoid civilian casualties”Mark TonerUS state department spokesman Jabari and another Hamas official who died alongside him were among at least 10 people killed in Gaza on Wednesday by the Israeli strikes and that number would probably rise, the Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, told reporters in New York.

Jabari, who was 46, is the most senior Hamas official to be killed in the Gaza Strip since the major Israeli offensive four years ago.

Outside the hospital to which Jabari's body was taken, angry Gaza residents chanted "retaliation" and "We want you to hit Tel Aviv tonight"

Courtesy : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20334575

Storm uncovers Tamil terrorist artillery in Sri Lanka

A storm surge in Sri Lanka’s northeast has exposed buried artillery guns of the Tamil terrorist group the Tigers, who leadership was killed by the military, eliminating the the movement.
Troops stumbled on four 152mm artillery barrels and one 130 mm piece believed to have been used by the terrorists during their last stand in the district of Mullaittivu, army spokesman Ruwan Wanigasooriya said, AFP reports.

“They had buried it along the coast and the cache was exposed due to a storm surge in the area,'' Wanigasooriya said. “We knew that the [Tamil] terrorists used heavy weapons, but this is physical evidence of their big artillery guns.’’

Government forces crushed the Tamil terrorists who were cornered in a small stretch of lagoon where the group’s top leadership was wiped out in May 2009.

The spectacular military success ended nearly four decades of fighting by the Tail terrorists.
“Tigers fired these artillery pieces from areas where the civilians were sheltering in the final stages of the war,’’ Wanigasooriya said.

Rights groups blamed the Tigers for using civilians as a human shield while government forces were accused of shelling civilian areas declared a no-fire zone during the final battles.
In May, security forces said they unearthed 6,250 kilos of C-4 type plastic explosives buried in a jungle area in Mullaittivu.

Courtesy : http://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking_news_detail.asp?id=27111&icid=4&d_str=20121101

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Keith Vaz's half-a-million pounds under scrutiny

Is Keith Vaz, a British MP of Goan origin, being investigated for making illegal earnings of half-a-million pounds? While Britain's leading mainline newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, said as much, sources in the Scotland Yard told Times of India(TOI) that £500,000 of "suspicious nature" were paid into various bank accounts held by Vaz over the last six years, the Times of India reported.

Keith Vaz has been constantly accusing Sri Lanka , vociferously repeating LTTE slogans in the parliament and recently brought pressure on the British government to appoint an independent investigator into the human rights record of Sri Lanka which the Sri Lanka government has angrily rejected. He is a close associate of the LTTE front, the British Tamil Forum and heads the All Party Parliamentary Group for the Tamils , which is carrying on a virulent campaign against Sri Lanka .

When contacted by the Times of India, Vaz strenuously denied wrongdoing. Pressed for an official comment, Scotland Yard's spokesman told TOI, "It would not be appropriate for the Metropolitan Police Service to comment on any individual's historic financial investigations that may or may not have been conducted."

"These weren't suspicious in any way," Vaz said. "They relate to the sale of a family home in London, the purchase of a new family home and a drawdown of equity from my bank."

The pro-Conservative party Daily Telegraph claimed the source of the funds was not declared publicly and the evidence gathered by the police may contradict assurances given by Vaz during the earlier investigation into his finances between 2000 and 2001.

"These matters relate to two parliamentary inquiries which began in 1999 and concluded in 2003," he said. "My finances were discussed by every newspaper in the country for a period of three years and were the subject of extensive examination."

Vaz added, "All ministers (and he was a minister then) have to report all their financial interests to their permanent secretary, which I did. I had no discussions with the then cabinet secretary or the then prime minister about any of these issues. I know of no investigation."

Vaz resigned as minister for Europe in 2001 in Tony Blair's government and was never re-appointed. The immediate cause of his stepping down was an allegation that he had received money from the billionaire Hinduja family relating to an application for a British passport by one of the brothers.

The MP, who has a high profile role as chairman of the House of Commons' select committee on home affairs, was investigated by the parliamentary commissioner for standards between 2000 and 2001. He was cleared of receiving illicit funds. As chairman of the select committee, Vaz has been putting the current Conservative-Liberal Democrat government through tough scrutiny. His wife, Maria Fernandes, has also been dragged into the controversy.
Andrew Bridgen, a Conservative MP told media Vaz had "questions to answer". He continued,: "I feel that he cannot continue to hold his role with the home affairs select committee during an investigation and call on him to stand down."


Courtesy - http://www.dailymirror.lk/news/22376-keith-vazs-half-a-million-pounds-under-scrutiny.html

Dr. Subramanian Swamy at Sri lanka Defence Seminar 2012

Dr. Subramanian Swamy at Sri lanka Defence Seminar 2012

Army saves life of LTTEr's daughter

By Vijayani EDIRISINGHE

        The Sri Lanka Army has intervened to save the life of a 20 year old girl in Jaffna who was in the throes of death due to an acute heart ailment recently.

Kajindanee, of Achchuveli, Jaffna had fallen ill several times and doctors had diagnosed a heart ailment for which she had obtained treatment without much success. Her father who joined the LTTE as an armed cadre had died during a confrontation with the Security Forces and her mother who had to fend for her family had made ends meet by working as a labourer.

When a mobile health camp was held in Jaffna on March 15 for the benefit of people in Jaffna on the instructions of Jaffna Commander Maj Gen Mahinda Hathurusinghe, Kajindanee too had attended the camp accompanied by her mother. Consultant heart surgeon Dr. Vivek Gupta, an Indian doctor attached to the Colombo Asiri Hospital Cardiology Unit who was among the specialists conducting the camp had diagnosed an acute heart ailment and found that Kajindanee's life would not last for more than 15 days unless she was immediately attended to. Kajindanee's mother who heard about the serious condition of her daughter had pleaded with Col Wijendra and doctors to somehow save her life.

Col Wijendra had immediately gone into action to find a donor to sponsor Kajindanee's heart operation. An engineer named Thirubanandan who was a friend of the Security Forces in Jaffna had volunteered to provide Rs 400,000 needed for the surgery and the purchase of two valves (stents).

Dr. Anil Perera, Dr. Manjula Karunaratne and Dr. Vivek Gupta of the Asiri Hospital had agreed to perform Kajindanee's operation free.

Maj. Gen. Mahinda Hathurusinghe arranged to send Kajindanee and her mother to the Asiri hospital in Colombo by a special fight. A successful operation was performed on Kajindanee on March 30 thus saving a young life which otherwise would have faded away in a matter of 15 days or so.

All arrangements have been made by the Army to provide board and lodging in Colombo for Kajindanee and her mother and post surgical medical treatment until she is fit to return to Jaffna.

The 3rd Vijayabahu Artillery Regiment of Jaffna will be responsible for the safety of Kajindanee and her mother until they return home. Kajindanee's mother was full of praise for the Sri Lanka Armed Forces for coming to the assistance of their family. The Tamil community of Jaffna is also thankful to them for this humane deed.

url - http://www.dailynews.lk/2012/04/05/news24.asp

Channel 4 playing professional fouls

         Channel 4 in its new release has alleged that the doctors who had made various statements to international media when they were serving in government hospitals during war time in Wanni, have changed their stance due to pressure by government while under custody of Criminal Investigation Department (CID). If the doctors recant their eyewitnesses they would be imprisoned under Sri Lanka's Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), it has alleged.

          This seems another loony allegation level against the government of Sri Lanka by the CH 4. The fact remains true that when the doctors in NFZ, they were entirely under control of the LTTE. The doctors were well aware of the repercussions they would have to face if they say anything against the Tamil Tigers. So they had spoken for them giving exaggerated civilian casualty figures, blaming security forces of arbitrary shelling on hospitals and so on and so forth to the international media. This they had done only for the sake of their survival and to treat the injured they later revealed.

Read More : http://www.scribd.com/doc/86310977/Channel-4-Playing-Professional-Fouls

Miliband's campaign: Blind to the truth and bedding falsehoods

by Saratha RAJENDRAN

     Historians give credit to the British for creating most of the internal conflicts in countries which were under British colonial rule (Ex: Rhodesia, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka).


    A most apparent case study would be the British Labour Party's decision to move from the Tories' policy of humanitarian relief in Yugoslavia to threaten, then actual, aggression against the Serbs. By rewarding each separatist group in turn, it achieved NATO's covert objective of Balkan fragmentation.


  Having said that, why would the same Labour Party's David Miliband be interested in interfering with a national issue in Sri Lanka soil? The latest exhibition of impunity unfolds as the former British Foreign Minister appears in yet another Channel-4 outcry of "possible war crimes". "Incompetent neo-imperial meddler", is how Sri Lanka regards Miliband who has always fallen short of responsible statesmanship on his convictions, backed by purely biases lacking in facts.

Read More : http://www.scribd.com/doc/86310120/Blind-to-the-Truth-and-Bedding-Falsehoods

Channel 4 recycling old footage as new evidence

by Shanika SRIYANANDA

One of the world’s leading experts on digital video systems and former head of CISCO’s Global Broadcast and Digital Video Practice division Siri Hewavitharana commenting on the latest video by Channel 4 (CH4) said CH4 was recycling old footage as new evidence with a compliant forensic pathologist called Prof Derrick Pounder to evaluate photographic evidence, but with nobody to prove. Hewavitharana said this move goes against all Forensic Science and he was caught earlier trying to alter the time of death in a criminal case so that his findings would fit the police report. “He was challenged by Prof. Busuttil, a reputed forensic expert in Scotland,” he said.

The web link is http://www.mojoscotland.com/steven_johnston/b_s_appeal.html

“We have a similar scenario in the video, where Prof Derrick Pounder is creating something out of nothing without any person to analyse and create a false impression by innuendo and half truths regarding Vellupillai Prabhakaran’s death and also his son’s death.

No one knows how the son was killed, and the coward of a father (remember Praba did not have a cyanide capsule with him) may have ordered his criminal gang to shoot the boy.

FINAL DAYS IN VANNI: 600 TAMILS SHOT AND KILLED AS STRAY DOGS- FIRST PERSON REVELATION

More than 600 innocent Tamil civilians were shot and killed like stray dogs from 1 October 2008 to 18 May 2009 in the Vanni region, but not a single innocent civilian was killed by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces in the hostility campaign against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. 

S. Kanagaratnam - A former TNA MP 

Read More : http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2011/04/19/final-days-vanni-600-tamils-shot-and-killed-stray-dogs-first-person-revelation

Download : http://www.scribd.com/doc/86049675/Final-Days-in-Vanni

Balachandran, marketable product

Why was Channel 4 silent when hundreds of children were butchered by the LTTE?:

by a Special Correspondent 

A death of a child, no doubt is a reason to mourn. Especially when he or she is brutally killed, it is a grave crime which has to be dealt with severely. The disturbing image of a bullet-ridden body of a boy telecast in the latest controversial Channel 4 video has caused a certain amount of anxiety to many.

In the video - Sri Lanka's killing fields: war crimes unpunished - a 12-year-old boy with five bullet holes in his chest can be seen and the presenter, Jon Snow says that the boy is Balachandran Prabhakaran, youngest son of LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. The director is Callum Macrae, a former reporter at Channel 4, now turned director. For many, who have viewed Channel 4's previous videos, this is heart-rending as a body of a teenage boy is shown. The video 'accuses' the Security Forces of executing the boy with five others, who were identified as 'bodyguards' of the teenager.


Read More -http://www.warcrimesrilanka.blogspot.com/p/balachandran-marketable-product.html

Mrs. Clinton, Leave Sri Lanka Alone

The civil war in Sri Lanka was both brutal and a human tragedy. The United Nations estimated that the death toll from the Tamil Tigers’ long secession struggle might exceed 100,000. The Tigers were brutal in their tactics. Their kidnapping and exploitation of young Tamils was not unlike that perpetrated by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. Like radical Islamists, the Tamil Tigers exploited a culture of martyrdom to promote suicide bombing. Like Hezbollah, the Tamil Tigers received technical assistance from North Korea (making Condoleezza Rice’s recommendation to remove North Korea from the state sponsor of terror list indefensible).

In May 2009, the Sri Lankan army did what hundreds of diplomats and UN pronouncements over more than a quarter century had failed to do: They defeated the Tamil Tigers and finally liberated Sri Lanka from the nightmare of terrorism and insurgency. No civil war is pretty, and the conclusion of Sri Lanka’s bloody struggle was no different. Britain’s Channel 4, for example, has acquired footage purporting to show the execution of the 12-year-old son of the rebel leader son of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the Tamil Tigers’ leader. If he was executed, that was wrong. But given Prabhakaran’s use of children and his glorification of suicide bombing, it would be unfair to ask any Sri Lankan soldier to risk life and limb to take prisoners. Had the Tamil Tigers cared an iota for the Geneva Conventions, perhaps it would be different, but if they eschewed the Conventions in life, then they should not seek their recompense in death.
Read More : http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/03/12/mrs-clinton-leave-sri-lanka-alone/

Does the US value Human Rights?

'Stalking from home to home, a United States Army sergeant methodically killed at least 16 civilians, 9 of them children, in a rural stretch of southern Afghanistan early on Sunday, igniting fears of a new wave of anti-American hostility, Afghan and American officials said,' the New York Times reported Sunday.

In one of the most gruesome human rights abuses in recent times, a US soldier is reported to have walkedover a mile (1.6 km) from his base in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province trying door after door before breaking into three houses and killing 16 sleeping civilians, nine of whom were children. Reports quote villagers as saying that he had collected 11 of the bodies and set fire to them.

Sadly, this is only the latest in a string of violations of international humanitarian law by US forces stretching back several years.

Earlier this month, five American servicemen and an Afghan translator were reported to have burned copies of the Quran which were among religious materials seized from a detainee facility at Bagram Airfield last week, prompting a wave of outrage.

Read More http://warcrimesrilanka.blogspot.com/p/does-us-value-human-rights.html

A Jouney to Hell and Back

The Truth Is More Terrifying Than Fiction

Since the conflict in the North and East of Sri Lanka broke out into large scale hostilities and eventually full-scale armed confrontation between the Libera­tion Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the security forces of the Sri Lankan government, there have been many attempts at negotiating a political settlement.  The first talks were held in 1985 in Bhutan. The ‘Thimpu Talks’ was the first attempt at a negotiated settlement to the conflict.  The Cease Fire Agreement (CFA) between the then Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam of February 2002 was the last attempt made to solve the conflict that prevailed in the country …

 “International Human Rights expert, Mr. Ian Martin, former Secretary General of Amnesty Inter­national who had made a study of the incorporation of the Human Rights dimension into the CFA, had made certain recommendations in that regard. How­ever this initiative was rejected by Mr. Anton Balasin­gham who objected to an international scrutiny of the human rights situation in the North and the East…” 

Read More - http://www.scribd.com/doc/84778533
Download - http://www.4shared.com/office/GWt8skDs/Hell_-_Doc.html

An Unreliable Witness

GORDON WEISS, THE CAGE AND SRI LANKA

Gordon Weiss was a spokesman for the United Nations organisation in Sri Lanka for two years at the

end of that country’s civil war. His 2011 book, The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of

the Tamil Tigers, is said to be a close study of the last months and weeks of the conflict in the Vanni.1

The Cage is a controversial, anti-government view of the end of the war. His book is well-written, as

might be expected of an articulate, middle-class and well-educated international bureaucrat. The

problem is that it is a deeply-flawed account of a crisis that in several key respects was impossible to

document – most notably with regard to civilian casualties. The events said to have been described in

The Cage were infinitely complicated. Leaving aside mistakes in historical detail and other simple fact

2, it is Weiss’s inability to answer key questions he begrudgingly or accidentally poses; selectivity with

information and a particularly self-serving slant on the events in the Vanni from late 2008 up until May

2009 that are of concern to anyone expecting an accurate account of the crisis.

For more reading - http://www.scribd.com/doc/84648860

Download - http://www.4shared.com/office/Eol8CWb1/An_Unreliable_Witness.html

Appalling Journalism

Jon Snow and Channel 4 on Sri Lanka

In June 2011, Britain’s Channel 4 News broadcast a programme entitled “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields”, which made a number of allegations about the last few months of the war in Sri Lanka.1 Jon Snow, the Channel’s senior news presenter, claimed the programme was “a forensic investigation into the final weeks of the quarter-century-long civil war between the government of Sri Lanka and the secessionist rebels, the Tamil Tigers.”2 Channel 4 claimed that the government was responsible for the targeted shelling of civilians, extrajudicial executions of prisoners and the apparent rape, sexual assault and murder of female Tamil fighters, allegations said to be supported by “devastating new video evidence of war crimes – some of the most horrific footage Channel 4 has ever broadcast”.3 Channel 4 also claimed that the government was responsible all told for the deaths of as many as 40,000 civilians towards the end of the war

Read More - http://www.scribd.com/doc/84649069

Download - http://www.4shared.com/office/ouBsntxH/Appalling_Journalism.html

Unprofessionalism revisited

Channel 4 News, Sri Lanka and “Fernando”

On 27 July 2011, Channel 4 News screened a programme in which they claimed to have testimony from an eyewitness, “Fernando”, who said he had seen systematic war crimes committed by Sri Lankan soldiers in the final stages of the 26 year-long civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, also known as the “Tamil Tigers”).1 Channel 4 claimed that “Fernando”, who as usual for Channel 4 allegations about Sri Lanka was unidentified and disguised, was operating with Sri Lanka’s 58th Division during the final assaults in question. Channel 4 News claimed that he said “men, women, and children were actively targeted with small arms by government forces”.

Read More -http://www.scribd.com/doc/84649293 

Download - http://www.4shared.com/office/h5yLHhCM/Unprofessionalism_Revisited.html 

The Radicalization of Children

AN Insight into LTTE Administered Tamil Schools in Europe

  

 Examining the beginnings of the „Thamilcholai’ school system, it is clear that it was designed and created by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) terrorist movement, initially within Sri Lanka. The beginnings of this school system can be seen as beginning as an orphanage in and around the year 1990 in accordance with the wishes of the LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabakaran. This orphanage was established with 90 children aged between 2-12 years. In the years 1991 and 1993 the LTTE established two orphanages namely „Sencholai‟ for female orphans and „Kantharuban Aravichollai ‟ for male orphans (Kantharuban was the name of the first LTTE “sea tiger” suicide cadre who took part in a suicide operation to destroy the Sri Lanka Navy ship “Edithra”, in 1990). These orphanages were controlled and administered by the LTTE but to the outside world they were presented as orphanages run by an independent social welfare group.

Read More - http://www.scribd.com/doc/84649206
Download - http://www.4shared.com/office/E8o_aHc-/Radicalization_of_Children.html