Terrorist-criminal-political nexus in Tamil Nadu growing - Prof. Rohan Gunaratna

International counter terrorism expert based in Singapore, Prof. Rohan Gunaratna warns that there is a well concerted campaign in Tamil Nadu, launched by the LTTE, to make Tamil people rise up against Sri Lanka and this is a development that Sri Lanka should be concerned about.

In an interview with the Sunday Observer he said, "The terrorist-criminal-political nexus (in Tamil Nadu) is growing...." and went on to caution the Government that the LTTE misinformation and disinformation campaign was sure to spill over from Tamil Nadu to other south Indian States unless the Government took immediate steps to counter their malicious moves.

He claimed that the LTTE support base which was lying low after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, was once again being effectively revived by the LTTE.

The excerpts of the interview:

Q:Following a leaked confidential Indian government document it came to light a few days ago how the LTTE orchestrated a campaign of appeals, including from the EU to delay the hanging of the Rajiv Gandhi killers. Media reported that Rashtrapati Bhavan was bombarded with clemency pleas originating from France, Germany, Denmark, South Africa, UK and from its own MPs. In fact the campaign has been successful todate. Isn't this a good eye opener for the international community?

A: The LTTE political network in India is deep. The terrorist-criminal-political nexus is growing as some Tamil Nadu politicians are susceptible to LTTE funding, business (film industry) and fanaticism. After the Rajiv Gandhi assassination by the LTTE, once again its supporters, Vijayakanth, Gopalasamy, Karunanidhi, Nedumaran and Seeman are re-emerging.

The LTTE orchestrated the attack on the Sri Lankan pilgrims and also the protests when President Mahinda Rajapaksa visited India. The LTTE misinformation and disinformation will spread from Tamil Nadu to other south Indian States unless the Sri Lankan Government takes immediate steps to counter that.

With the LTTE politicising Indian Tamils to hate Sri Lanka the Ministry of Information in Colombo should counter the propaganda in Tamil Nadu in their own language. The Ministry of External Affairs in Colombo should invite Tamil Nadu politicians including Jayalalitha to visit Sri Lanka's north.

Q:Sri Lanka is bracing for a tough time at the UN Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva, with a US sponsored procedural-resolution and an adverse report by High Commissioner Navi Pillai ready to be tabled. Your comments?

A:Geneva is not an exercise in Human Rights. It is an exercise in politics. Sri Lanka is a resilient nation that has withstood such challenges. Amidst international pressure generated by LTTE lobbying, Sri Lanka defeated one of the most ruthless groups.

Thereafter amidst pressure to withdraw, its security forces, Sri Lanka maintained its presence to ensure the continued stability of the North and the East. The US led European coalitions could neither defeat terror nor restore stability either in Iraq or Afghanistan. Today, both countries are suffering and they even threaten their neighbours. In contrast Sri Lanka is building a vibrant infrastructure and restoring livelihood.

In comparison to countries facing similar situations, Sri Lanka performed exceptionally well as its focus was to advance national interests and neither be deterred by threats nor influenced by regional or superpower politics.

Q:What is your take on the strength of LTTE propaganda and their support base in Geneva?

A:The LTTE that waged terror died with Prabhakaran but the support network that enabled violence re-branded itself as champions of human rights. The LTTE overseas network has begun to degrade with the majority of Tamils considering LTTE dissent leaders a waste of time and resources.

However the failure of the Government to engage the West created opportunities for a reinvented LTTE to access human rights lobby groups in foreign Governments, at the UN and in NGOs. Today in three-piece suits, LTTE ideologues, propagandists and activists discuss human rights issues.

The latest trend is for the LTTE to reach out to West-funded, anti-Sri Lankan government NGOs, human rights activists, journalists and co-opt them for Geneva.

LTTE fronts and sympathetic groups fund the LTTE proxy, the TNA. Canadian and British politicians driven by LTTE orchestrated votes and funds issue pro LTTE statements. This is a serious threat for Sri Lanka to fight its case and convince the international community.

Q: What is the way forward for Sri Lanka in your opinion?

A:First the government should continue to build a harmonious relationship between Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims and secondly re-engage the West. Sri Lankans tend to withdraw when the mind of the other is poisoned. Then the tendency of Colombo is to disengage foreign governments when the foreign governments are influenced by misinformation and disinformation.

The strategy should be to engage and address issues that can be resolved. As Sri Lanka is misperceived as an ally of China, Colombo should inform the West and India, that the relationship with China is economic and not military. Otherwise, Sri Lanka will be trapped in a new 'cold war'. Sri Lanka should be mindful of the changing geostrategic and geopolitical realities and not antagonise India.

Courtesy : Sunday Observer

http://www.defence.lk/new.asp?fname=Terrorist_criminal_political_nexus_in_Tamil_Nadu_growing_20130224_01

One more report nails Sri Lanka’s lies; time for action is now!

There is something terribly wrong here: the whole world says with evidence that Sri Lanka has killed thousands of innocent Tamil civilians and committed war crimes; but the island nation laughs them off saying it is a concerted effort to discredit the country.

Forget America, the UK and the rest of Europe, it was the most neutral interlocutor that one can imagine, the UN, which said first that about 40,000 innocent Tamils had been killed in 2009 – mostly by shelling to no-fire zones created by the Sri Lankan military itself – as the country pushed for its victory against the LTTE.

Rights groups all over the world recorded testimonies and case studies corroborating what the UN has said. Then came two documentaries by UK’s Channel-4 which showed chilling evidence of shelling on civilians, executions, evidence of sexual abuse and everything that can be counted as war crimes.

But Sri Lanka still maintained that there were no civilian deaths. Initially the triumphalist Rajapakse gave some silly figures of unavoidable civilian casualties, but when the evidence was mounting, he marginally revised them. Still, they refuted everything the UN and the rest of the world have said.

A Sri Lankan factory worker interviewed by the HRW. Screen-grab from YouTube video.

In Sri Lanka’s eyes, the entire world was lying and whatever it said alone was absolute truth.

Now, there is more damning evidence against Sri Lanka.

International watchdog, Human Rights Watch (HRW), on Tuesday released a 140-page report which establishes that scores of women and men were sexually abused by the security forces of the Sri Lankan regime – the military, police, intelligence and others – during 2006-2012 and it is still continuing.

The report, aptly titled “We Will Teach You a Lesson”, talks about a vengeful and ultranationalist government taking on its own citizens purely based on racial prejudice and hatred. It corroborates the recent assessment of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees that “ sexual violence, including but not limited to rape, against Tamil men in detention has also been reported recently, including reports of cases perpetrated in the post-conflict period.”

The report is a compilation of 75 case studies of alleged rape, both men and women, based on in-depth interviews with victims conducted in several countries. HRW has said that it was able to interview this many people in such a limited number of former detainees strongly indicates the possibility of widespread sexual abuse. Thousands of people had been detained during and after the war in Sri Lanka.

The report said eight cases that it documented occurred in 2012, indicating the impunity with which the Sri Lank is still thumbing is nose at the international community.

“In all of the cases documented in this report, the acts of rape and sexual violence were accompanied by other forms of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment by state security forces. The conditions in which the individuals were held—without access to judges, defense lawyers, relatives, or doctors—violated fundamental due process rights. Often the perpetrators came from more than one branch of the security forces, and included members of the Sri Lankan army, police, and pro-government Tamil paramilitary groups,” the report said.

“In the cases we investigated, most of the detainees were interrogated by Sinhala- speaking security officials with Tamil interpreters. Most were forced to sign a confession in Sinhala following their abuse, though the torture often continued after they signed confessions. Detainees were normally not released but rather allowed to “escape” after a relative paid a bribe. Human Rights Watch of necessity was only able to interview those no longer in custody—the fate of detainees who remain in custody, while unknown to us, is of urgent concern.”

Here is one of the accounts in the report – the sexual abuse of a 31 year old man, identified as KP, who was abducted by a “white van” (one of the state symbols of terror in Sri Lanka). It’s pure horror.

“During the first interrogation, the official in military fatigues forced me to undress. He tried to have oral sex with me. He forced himself on me and raped me. During questioning, the officials would squeeze my penis. They would force me to masturbate them. One of them masturbated me. I was severely tortured when I resisted. The officials would furiously say some words in Sinhala when they sexually abused me. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. They abused me in Tamil and used slang words. I was sexually abused many times during my detention. On some days, the army official who had arrested me sexually abused me during interrogation. On two nights, I was raped by prison guards. The sexual abuse by the officials stopped after I signed the confession.”

The report also quoted detainees who said prior to their rapes, they were forced to strip, their genitals or breasts groped, and they were verbally abused and mocked. HRW said it found evidence of such violation on many of their medical reports.

A number cases involved people who had returned to Sri Lanka, either as deportees with failed attempts at overseas asylum or voluntarily, indicating that for Tamils, it is a dangerous place to return to even as the government claims peace and equality for all its citizens. They get picked up at the airport itself for detention and torture. Recently, an Australian citizen (male) also had disclosed after getting back to his country that he was detained and raped in Sri Lanka.

The HRW report is one more addition to the mountain of evidence on alleged war crimes and other excesses against humanity that the Sri Lankan government and its various agencies have committed. The world will repeat what it has scientifically documented and Sri Lanka will continue to pooh pooh them with impunity.

The timing of the HRW report, as well as the upcoming Channel 4 documentary (the third in a row) that will show the alleged execution of LTTE chief Prabhakaran’s son by security forces, is no secret. It’s to build pressure on the rest of the world, particularly on fences-sitters such as India, to press for action against island nation at the UN Human Right Council.

Even under optimum circumstances, the UNHRC’s options are limited. It will at best ask for the implementations of LLRC (The Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission) that the country had established to investigate the allegations of war crime. Sri Lanka has successfully procrastinated any possible action of the LLRC by telling the world the bureaucratic steps it has taken to implement the recommendations.

What is required now is way beyond LLRC. The LLRC was a ruse of Sri Lanka to hoodwink the rest of the world – show something symbolic and continue with its excesses. And even under best circumstances, a country-led process such as LLRC will be a complete sham because the country is plainly lying.
The action should be plain and simple as Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa has demanded – economic sanctions and action at the International Court of Criminal Justice.

Taking Rajapakse to the ICC is not easy because Sri Lanka is not a signatory. It requires a UN Security Council resolution to refer the case to the ICC. With China and Russia on its side, the alleged war criminals in Sri Lanka are perhaps confident that such a resolution at the SC will never get through and they don’t go behind bars.

However, what can still work is economic sanctions. It’s high time that the world has moved towards such an affirmative action. It is the minimum that the world, particularly India, should do to instill confidence in the rest of the world’s humanity. A rogue-nation such as Sri Lanka is as dangerous as a Talibanised Pakistan.

http://www.firstpost.com/world/one-more-report-nails-sri-lankas-lies-time-for-action-is-now-641643.html

Witnesses support claim that Sri Lanka army shot prisoners

Two eyewitnesses have come forward for the first time to support allegations that the Sri Lankan army executed two Tamil Tiger rebel leaders after they surrendered, carrying a white flag, at the close of the island’s civil war in 2009.

Their accounts cast fresh doubt on the Sri Lankan government’s claim that the rebels were killed by their own supporters and add to a growing body of evidence of war crimes allegedly committed by the Sri Lankan military during the conflict.

Last week, The Independent published photographs of the 12-year-old son of the Tamil Tiger chief eating a snack after being captured by the Sri Lankan army. Shortly afterwards, he was shot five times in the chest, probably at very close range according to a forensics expert.

The two new witnesses in what has become known as “the white flag incident” can testify they independently saw from different vantage points the Tamil Tiger leaders accepted into the custody of the Sri Lankan military and escorted from the front line, alive.

Now in London, he says he was taken to the front by members of the Sri Lankan military on the morning of 18 May 2009, and positioned behind an earth embankment. His job was to confirm the identity of the Tamil political leaders as they walked towards the army carrying white flags. He says it looked like a well-organised surrender with hundreds of soldiers, including senior officers with bodyguards, present.

The second witness, a government teacher, also now in London, says he was press-ganged into service for the rebels in the last months of the war. Hours before the incident, he says he also surrendered, knowing that the war was over and it was his only chance of survival. After being searched, he says he was held with others in a derelict building close to the front line. From this position he watched several groups of Tamil Tiger leaders and their relatives walk out of the war zone towards the Sri Lankan army, carrying white flags.

He admits he was surprised to see the leader of the Tiger political wing,  Nadesan, his Sinhalese wife and the head of the Tiger Peace Secretariat,  Pulidevan, in the first group. Officially the Tigers did not hold with surrender, issuing all recruits with cyanide capsules to wear around their necks to use in case of capture.

Both witnesses say Sri Lankan soldiers went out to greet several groups of surrendering rebels and escorted them over a bridge across a lagoon to waiting vehicles on the other side.

The former bodyguard waited for more than an hour until the military put him in the back of a pick-up truck and drove him away. Along the road he spotted soldiers taking photos on their mobile phones of corpses lying on the ground. As they went past, he recognised Pulidevan and Nadesan’s bodies. Photographs have since appeared on websites abroad showing the two Tiger leaders’ half-naked corpses, with bullet wounds and burn marks on their chests. 

The “white flag” incident also involved approximately 40 other rebels believed to have negotiated a surrender with the Sri Lankan government. None of them have been seen since.

Tamil Tiger rebels conducted a vicious campaign of terror for a separate homeland for decades, using suicide bombers to kill civilians and scores of politicians, including a President and an Indian Prime Minister.

Pulidevan and Nadesan were two of the most senior rebels to surrender. In the hours beforehand, they used satellite phones to send messages to diplomats, journalists and peace mediators to ensure top Sri Lankan officials, including the country’s President, knew of their intention to lay down their arms. They had been assured that their surrender would be accepted if they raised a white flag. 

However, the Sri Lankan defence ministry’s website lists Pulidevan and Nadesan as killed by troops of the 58th Division on 18 May 2009.

Sri Lanka’s government holds that the Tiger leaders were shot in the back by their own people, and say the army never executed any individuals.

Allegations the Sri Lankan army and rebels  committed war crimes at the end of a brutal war are widespread. According to United Nations investigators, the last months saw repeated and deliberate government shelling of hospitals, food queues and safe zones for civilians.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/witnesses-support-claim-that-sri-lanka-army-shot-prisoners-8508617.html

Important Srilankan story pages

http://jrsusa.wordpress.com/2009/04/

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/frances-harrison/

http://www.sangam.org/2009/05/Photos_Vanni.php

Witnesses support claim Lankan army executed LTTE rebels 'after they surrendered'

London Two eyewitnesses have supported allegations that the Sri Lankan army executed two Tamil Tiger rebel leaders after they surrendered the island's civil war in 2009.
Last week, photographs of the 12-year-old son of the Tamil Tiger chief eating a snack after being captured by the Sri Lankan army emerged. Shortly afterwards, he was shot five times in the chest, probably at very close range according to a forensics expert.

The two new witnesses in what has become known as "the white flag incident" can testify they independently saw from different vantage points the Tamil Tiger leaders accepted into the custody of the Sri Lankan military and escorted from the front line, alive.

According to the Independent, their accounts cast fresh doubt on the Sri Lankan government's claim that the rebels were killed by their own supporters and add to a growing body of evidence of war crimes allegedly committed by the Sri Lankan military during the conflict.

Pulidevan and Nadesan were two of the most senior rebels to surrender.

In the hours beforehand, they used satellite phones to send messages to diplomats, journalists and peace mediators to ensure top Sri Lankan officials, including the country's President, knew of their intention to lay down their arms.

They had been assured that their surrender would be accepted if they raised a white flag. Reports the Independent.

However, the Sri Lankan defence ministry's website lists Pulidevan and Nadesan as killed by troops of the 58th Division on May 18, 2009.

According to the paper, the "white flag" incident also involved approximately 40 other rebels believed to have negotiated a surrender with the Sri Lankan government. None of them have been seen since.

Time for Shias to leave Pakistan

It is a massacre alright. Sunni extremists, aligned with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, are killing Shias by the dozens in Pakistan.
I was yet to compile the list of the 106 (mostly Shias) killed in the twin bomb blasts in Quetta last month, that the news of another bomb blast killing yet another 84 (mostly Shias) in Quetta came over the wire. As the Shia massacres in Pakistan gain momentum, the State, including the Superior Courts, appear completely impotent.
In such troubling times some Shias may have a choice. They may sit and wait for a messiah or relocate to a Shia-exclusive enclave elsewhere, or to escape from Pakistan altogether. It may sound harsh, but it is an inescapable truth that Pakistan has been run over by the extremists and life is going to be even tougher for the minorities and moderate Sunnis in the near future.
In the two consecutive months this year, bomb blasts have killed hundreds of Shia Hazaras in Quetta, a Garrison town where each and every street is manned by intelligence operatives. Still, the militants operate with impunity. Saturday’s bomb blast, which has killed over 80 and injured hundreds, occurred almost within a month of the last bomb blast that delivered even a higher death toll.
Space is fast running out in Shia graveyards in Quetta. It may be the time for Shias to relocate to protect their next generation.
Many naively believe that peace will prevail in Pakistan and Afghanistan after the scheduled withdrawal of Nato troops from Afghanistan in 2014. While I vehemently oppose prolonging the stay of the Nato forces in the region, still I believe this would spell even a bigger disaster for the minorities in Pakistan. The battle-hardened veterans of the Afghan war will return to Pakistan to target Shias, Ahmadis, and other religious minorities. Even Barelvis may not escape the wrath of the mostly Deobandi-led militancy.
There are reasons for my pessimism. I saw the same happen in the late nineties when the Afghan war veterans were pushed into Indian-administered Kashmir. The resulting militancy left over 70,000 dead in Kashmir but failed to make any tangible progress towards the resolution of the dispute that has pitched India, Pakistan, and Kashmiris in a deadly decades old conflict.
What looked like a gory beginning of a new millennium in Indian-administered Kashmir, the security landscape however suddenly transformed in 2002 when the militants started to relocate to Pakistan and Afghanistan to join the Pashtun Taliban. The result was a decline in militancy which is evident from the graph below that shows the drop in the number of news reports about militancy in Srinagar starting after 2002.

Source: Tabulations by the author using the Factiva (2013) database.

A spike in militancy in Pakistan however is observed at the same time when militancy subsided in Indian-administered Kashmir. See the graph below that documents the number of civilians and security force personnel who became victims of terrorist violence in Pakistan. Since 2003, Pakistan has been the target of terrorism orchestrated by the very agents who once afforded the state its strategic depth.

Source: http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/pakistan/database/casualties.htm (Feb. 15, 2013).

Shias and other religious minorities are the most targeted in Pakistan. No city is safe anymore. The past few weeks saw the targeted killing of Shia lawyers, doctors, and other professionals in Peshawar. Shia legislators were shot dead in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi. While the State is struggling to suppress violence against Shias, the deep-rooted support for militants in society and the inadequate judicial system in Pakistan has created the situation where hardly any terrorist has been convicted of sectarian or other terrorism in Pakistan. In the past few years, several known militants have been set free by the courts because of the archaic judicial system that is incapable of convicting those involved in the modern-day guerilla warfare.
Some, not all, Shias have a choice. They can abandon the death traps in Quetta and Peshawar by relocating to the Shia majority areas in Karachi, Lahore, and other cities. A better option is to plead with the embassies in Islamabad for asylum for the Shia, especially the Hazara, youth.
Seeking asylum abroad may not win the approval of Pakistan’s superior courts, who have recently mocked those who held dual citizenship. However, it is better to be alive in exile than to be splattered on a wall in Pakistan.

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Murtaza Haider, Ph.D. is the Associate Dean of research and graduate programs at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in Toronto. He can be reached by email at murtaza.haider@ryerson.ca

In Tihar, officials feel ‘tinge of sorrow’

‘Al vida’, said Afzal Guru to his executioner, who had himself bid him good bye with the same words a few seconds earlier. And then as the executioner pulled a lever, Afzal’s frame hung from the gallows.

“He was dead in a minute, though”, as per the jail norms, the body was kept hanging for a full half hour, said an official who witnessed the hanging. Thereafter Afzal’s body was taken down from the gallows and buried with full religious rites near Jail No. 3, right next to the grave of Kashmiri separatist Maqbool Butt who too was hanged in Tihar.

“But there is a difference between the two. While Butt was a separatist leader, Afzal never spoke about secession of Kashmir from India. In fact, he used to tell us that he had been unnecessarily dragged into this. In fact, he actually believed in ridding India of corruption," the official added. He spoke to The Hindu on condition he not be identified because he was not authorised to speak to the press.

While right-wing activists across the country celebrated Afzal’s execution, in the jail itself there was no celebration. Rather, the staff appeared glum. “He was a pious soul and was extremely well behaved. Even as he was being taken to the gallows, he greeted the jail staff he knew by their first names. The only thing he requested before the hanging was that ‘mujhay ummeed hai aap mujhay dard nahin karaogay’ (I hope you will not cause me pain). And he was assured by the executioner, who himself was overcome with emotion as he kept looking into his eyes as the black cloth was drawn over them, that it would be a smooth journey. And so it was."

Contrary to some media reports, Afzal was told of his impending execution on the actual morning and not the previous evening.

“The only thing he had in the morning was a cup of tea. But that is because he was not offered any food. Otherwise, he was so normal that he would have had that too.” Initially Afzal was wearing a pheran, or Kashmiri gown. He later took bath and changed into a white kurta-pyjama and offered namaz.

"There have been about 25 executions in Tihar and senior officials [here] have witnessed the last 10, but never have they seen a man so calm and composed on learning the news of his impending death."

In the last couple of hours of his life, Afzal had the company of some jail officials. And he narrated to them his thoughts about life and death. "He spoke of universal brotherhood and oneness of the mankind; how no human being is bad and how the soul in each one was a creation of the same God. He believed that if you moved on the path of truth, that was the biggest achievement."

In fact, Afzal was so calm in the morning that he even penned down some of his thoughts, put the date and time on the paper and signed it.

When asked by the jail staff about his last thoughts of his family, on who would take care of them, Afzal said "it was God who looks after each one of us and so would be the case now".

"His strength came from his spirituality. He was a learned man; as well versed in Islam as with Hinduism. Often, he would tell us about the similarities in the two religions. Some time ago he had read all the four Vedas. How many Hindus have actually done that? You normally rejoice at the end of evil, [but] when a pious soul goes away, it leaves behind a tinge of sorrow," the official said.

Recalling, how all through Afzal was "joyful" as also "cool and calm", the officials said in the past they have seen people shiver at being told about their being taken to the gallows. "But here it was just like what we had heard about people going to the gallows smiling."

Another difference between Afzal and others who were executed for terrorist crimes terrorists, the official said, was that while almost all others had made religious or political cries before being hanged, Afzal just walked the last 100 steps from his cell to the gallows as he normally would and went away wishing those around him.

Keywords: Tihar Jail, Afzal Guru, JeM, 2001 parliament attack, Afzal Guru hanging

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/in-tihar-officials-feel-tinge-of-sorrow/article4400897.ece