The Blood Spattered Legacy of Crimes Against Humanity of the British Empire
Posted on November 22nd, 2013
By Ananda-USA
If‚ Sri Lanka is hauled up by the United Kingdom in front of the UNHRC meeting in Geneva next March as UK Premier David Cameron has threatened to do, Sri Lanka’s UNHRC team should ENTER INTO THE PERMANENT UNHRC RECORD a FULL LIST OF global WAR CRIMES and HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS by Britain, and DEMAND EQUAL ACCOUNTABILITY from the United Kingdom.
So far, the United Kingdom, has gotten away scot-free with war-mongering and killing innocents all over the world with absolute IMPUNITY, with a slap on the wrist by the captive puppet United Nations and the International Criminal Court. Let us now shine a bright light on the war crimes skeleton’s stacked to the ceiling in the historical cupboard of this self-appointed holier-than-thou HYPOCRITICAL COUNTRY, immersed up to the neck in far greater war crimes, waging a global war against other distant nations to preserve its Imperialist hegemony and accusing sovereign nations defending their own people against foreign sponsored terrorism on their own territory.
A PARTIAL list of these British CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, culled from sources on the Web, is given below:
-¦. The ILLEGAL unpunished war in Iraq without UN sanction and based on false fabricated allegations of WMD production by the Iraqis, extinguished over 1.5 million Iraqi lives as estimated by the British Medical Association-â„¢s Lancet journal staff. During the first years of British rule in Iraq, numerous attacks on civilians were carried out, including village burning and indiscriminate bombing.
-¦. Raping of local German women was a common feature among British troops in post-WWII occupation of Germany. Even elderly women were targeted. The Royal Military Police tended to turn a blind eye towards abuse of German prisoners and civilians but rape was a major issue for them.
-¦.The indiscriminate carpet bombing of Dresden, Germany that created a firestorm that killed over 100,000 people. While -no agreement, treaty, convention or any other instrument governing the protection of the civilian population or civilian property- from aerial attack was adopted before the war, the Hague Conventions did prohibit the bombardment of undefended towns. Allied forces inquiry concluded that an air attack on Dresden was militarily justified on the grounds the city was defended.
-¦. The summary execution of 7 captured Argentine soldiers by British soldiers in the Falklands war. In 1993, Argentine president Carlos Menem ordered an investigation into allegations that Argentine soldiers captured during the Battle of Mount Longdon had been executed by British paratroopers. The statements were said to confirm seven executions.
-¦. The GENOCIDE in Sri Lanka in the Uva-Welassa uprising of 1818. Tens of thousands of innocent villagers were slaughtered by marauding British troops, thousands of women raped, thousands of children decapitated, hundreds of thousands of homes burned, all cattle and other live stock killed, fruit trees cut down, rice fields and irrigation systems destroyed, and the land and the means of livelihood of the people laid waste, just as Gen. Tecumseh Sherman did fifty years later in his march from Atlanta to the Sea in the US Civil War.
-¦. The suppression of India-â„¢s 1857 Sepoy Mutiny including widespread summary executions across the countryside, particularly by forces under the command of Neill and Renaud; indiscriminate murder of civilians during the capture of Delhi; and the summary execution of the princes of Delhi and other Indian leaders,
-¦.. The abuse and murder of Boer civilians in the Second Boer War, when the British Empire ordered the civilian internment of the Afrikaner population into concentration camps, killing around 34,000 people. A later Prime Minister, Henry Campbell-Bannerman, declared in the British Parliament on 14 June 1901: -When is a war not a war? When it is waged in South Africa by methods of barbarism.-
-¦. The murder of German naval prisoners from two German submarines, U-27 and U-41, which were sunk by the British Q-ship HMS Baralong between August and September 1915. In the first case, a number of survivors were summarily executed by Baralong‚´s crew members under orders of Lieutenant Godfrey Herbert on 19 August 1915. The massacre was reported to a newspaper by American citizens on board Nicosia, a British freighter loaded with war supplies which was stopped by U-27 just minutes before the incident. On 24 September, Baralong destroyed U-41, which was in the process of sinking the cargo ship Urbino. According to Karl Goetz, the U-41-²s commander, the British vessel continued flying the U.S. flag after opening fire on the submarine, and the lifeboat carrying the German survivors was rammed and sunk by the British Q-ship.
-¦. The use of chemical weapons in WW-I. Poison gas was introduced by Imperial Germany, and was subsequently used by all major belligerents (including Britain) in the war against enemy soldiers, in violation of the 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare, which prohibited the use of -poison or poisoned weapons- in warfare.
-¦.. The killing of Irish civilians in retaliation for Bloody Sunday violence in Dublin on 21 November 1920 in which the IRA assassinated 13 British intelligence agents. That same afternoon, a joint force of British soldiers, policemen, and paramilitaries opened fire in retaliation on a crowd attending a Gaelic football match in Croke Park, killing 14 civilians and wounding 68. The British are responsible for many other atrocities in Ireland, including engineering the Potato famine that killed tens of thousands of Irishmen.
-¦. The greatest genocide of the 20-th century was not the Holocaust in German death camps during WW-II, but the Bengal famine in India as late as 1943, caused due to English atrocities and food shipments to the UK from India. Mass stockpile of food grain harvested in the state of Bengal, were taken away and hoarded by the English in anticipation of Japanese attack. Very seldom has this genocide been mentioned in historical records. More than 3 million people perished. Never has England acknowledged this fact, and never will they include this in their historical records. It is an absolute shame. This aspect places England not much better than some of the merciless regimes of the modern era that have absolutely no remorse for the crimes they have committed.
-¦. The mass murder by engineered famines in Colonial India. In his book Late Victorian Holocausts, published in 2001, Mike Davis tells the story of the famines which killed between 12 and 29 million Indians. These people were, he demonstrates, murdered by British state policy.
When an El Nino drought destituted the farmers of the Deccan plateau in 1876 there was a net surplus of rice and wheat in India. But the viceroy, Lord Lytton, insisted that nothing should prevent its export to England. In 1877 and 1878, at height of the famine, grain merchants exported a record 6.4 million hundredweight of wheat. As the peasants began to starve, government officials were ordered -to discourage relief works in every possible way-. The Anti-Charitable Contributions Act of 1877 prohibited -at the pain of imprisonment private relief donations that potentially interfered with the market fixing of grain prices.- The only relief permitted in most districts was hard labour, from which anyone in an advanced state of starvation was turned away. Within the labour camps, the workers were given less food than the inmates of Buchenwald. In 1877, monthly mortality in the camps equated to an annual death rate of 94%.
As millions died, the imperial government launched -a militarized campaign to collect the tax arrears accumulated during the drought.- The money, which ruined those who might otherwise have survived the famine, was used by Lytton to fund his war in Afghanistan. Even in places which had produced a crop surplus, the government-â„¢s export policies, like Stalin-â„¢s in the Ukraine, manufactured hunger. In the North-western provinces, Oud and the Punjab, which had brought in record harvests in the preceding three years, at least 1.25m died.
-¦.. The slaughter of 100,000 people by violence and engineered famine in Kenya. Three recent books -” Britain-â„¢s Gulag by Caroline Elkins, Histories of the Hanged by David Anderson and Web of Deceit by Mark Curtis -” show how white settlers and British troops suppressed the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya in the 1950s. Thrown off their best land and deprived of political rights, the Kikuyu started to organise -” some of them violently -” against colonial rule. The British responded by driving up to 320,000 of them into concentration camps. Most of the remainder -” over a million -” were held in -enclosed villages-. Prisoners were questioned with the help of -slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging until death, pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight, and burning eardrums with lit cigarettes.- British soldiers used a -metal castrating instrument- to cut off testicles and fingers. -By the time I cut his balls off,- one settler boasted, -he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket-. The soldiers were told they could shoot anyone they liked -provided they were black-. Elkins-â„¢s evidence suggests that over 100,000 Kikuyu were either killed by the British or died of disease and starvation in the camps. David Anderson documents the hanging of 1090 suspected rebels: far more than the French executed in Algeria. Thousands more were summarily executed by soldiers, who claimed they had -failed to halt- when challenged.
-¦. At least twenty more atrocities were overseen and organised by the British government or British colonial settlers. They include, for example, the Tasmanian genocide, the use of collective punishment in Malaya, the bombing of villages in Oman, the dirty war in North Yemen, the evacuation of Diego Garcia. Some of them might trigger a vague, brainstem memory in a few thousand readers, but most people would have no idea what I-â„¢m talking about. Max Hastings, in the Guardian today, laments our -relative lack of interest in Stalin and Mao-â„¢s crimes.- But at least we are aware that they happened.
-¦. The enslavement of whole Indian villages and transporting them as bonded laborers to work in other British colonies in Asia, Africa and the West Indies. This is how many of the Indian communities in other colonized countries were created.
-¦. The production of Opium in India and its sale under military threats (i.e., the Opium Wars) to the people of Imperial China to convert them wholesale into drug addicts.
Seeing little to gain from trade with European countries, the Chinese Qing emperor permitted Europeans to trade only at the port of Canton, and only through licensed Chinese merchants. For years, foreign merchants accepted Chinese rules-”but by 1839 the British, who were the dominant trading group, were ready to flex their muscles.
They had found a drug that the Chinese would buy: opium. Grown legally in British India, opium was smuggled into China, where its use and sale became illegal after the damaging effects it had on the Chinese people.
With its control of the seas, the British easily shut down key Chinese ports and forced the Chinese to negotiate-”marking the beginning of what is known as the -one hundred years of humiliation- for the Chinese. Dissatisfied with the resulting agreement, the British sent a second and larger force that took even more coastal cities, including Shanghai. The ensuing Opium War was settled at gunpoint; the resulting Treaty of Nanjing opened five ports to international trade, fixed the tariff on imported goods at five percent, imposed an indemnity of twenty-one million ounces of silver on China to cover Britain-â„¢s war expenses, and ceded the island of Hong Kong to Great Britain.
This treaty satisfied neither side. Between 1856 and 1860, Britain and France renewed hostilities with China. Seventeen thousand British and French troops occupied Beijing and set the Imperial Palace on fire. Another round of harsh treaties gave European merchants and missionaries greater privileges, and forced the Chinese to open several more cities to foreign trade and opium sales.
November 18th, 2013 at 12:26 pm
Well said Ananda.
Bloody Brishit trying to teach SL human rights without putting its damn house in order.
November 18th, 2013 at 1:05 pm
Thought the Island Editorial is not far off the mark considering the recent pronouncements from the Chinese Foreign office.
CHOGM or UNHRC Summit? — II
November 17, 2013, 8:36 pm
CHOGM is over—thankfully. Everything went as planned, the piece de resistance being its stunning opening ceremony. Sri Lanka has proved that it is safe for one and all.
Prince Charles must have seen, more than any other foreign dignitary, the huge improvement in security situation. In 1998, he was here for the 50th anniversary of Independence in the aftermath of a massive terror strike. But, the Commonwealth leaders who gathered here the other day could even have enjoyed leisurely strolls in the sunshine if they had so desired. In fact, British Prime Minister David Cameron was seen playing cricket.
PM Cameron, however, did his damnedest to turn CHOGM into a UNHRC summit of sorts. He came here to deliver a message. Shorn of diplomatic frou-frou, it was that unless Sri Lanka conducted a ‘proper’ probe into its alleged war crimes by next March he himself would campaign for a UN investigation.
Cameron is obviously singing for votes. Thanks to Wikileaks it is now known why David Miliband as British Foreign Secretary evinced so keen an interest in Sri Lanka’s conflict towards its closing stages in 2009. He has confessed, according to a leaked cable, that he remained maniacally focused on Sri Lanka because his party was dependent on pro-LTTE voters in Labour constituencies with slim majorities. He is now calling for stripping President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Commonwealth chairmanship! Why Cameron and Miliband are trying to outdo each other in bashing this country is only too clear; their concern is votes and not human rights as such.
Interestingly, Cameron has, at a meeting with President Rajapaksa, stressed the need for a process of truth-telling, we are told. One couldn’t agree with him more! Truth-telling is, no doubt, a prerequisite for reconciliation. However, example is better than precept. Will Cameron set an example to President Rajapaksa by releasing an unedited version of the Chilcot Report on Britain’s involvement in America’s illegal war against Iraq? Truth-telling like charity should begin at home, eh?
Will Cameron be able to honour his promise to have a UN war crimes probe launched against Sri Lanka? All efforts by the UK and its allies to move the UN against Syria in a bid to take military action purportedly to prevent a humanitarian disaster and the US attempt to destroy President Assad’s ‘chemical weapons’ with missile strikes came a cropper, didn’t they? So, it is doubtful whether Cameron is equal to the task of manipulating the UN, especially the Security Council, to achieve his objective.
The Sri Lankan government’s cavalier attitude towards human rights is only too well known. However, it has drawn flak from the West for a different reason—its foreign policy perceived to be anti-western.
The Western governments are, as is common knowledge, no respecters of human rights, which they use as a bludgeon against governments that refuse to toe their line. This is why they defend pro-western, repressive regimes in countries like Bahrain. They went so far as to coerce the UNHRC into withdrawing a statement that condemned the brutal suppression of pro-democracy protests in that country. Britain, it may be recalled, never so much as censured Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who captured power through a military coup and killed his opponents with impunity. His Caravan of Death left thousands of suspected Communists dead. But, Britain defended him to the hilt because of his brutal suppression of socialism in that part of the world and his support for the British military during the Falklands war.
President Rajapaksa’s problems are not likely to go away. His external enemies will pursue him relentlessly and do everything in their power to make Commonwealth chairmanship a crown of thorns for him. Miliband, as was said earlier, is making a frantic effort to muster support for his campaign to remove President Rajapaksa as the Commonwealth chairman though the tradition is that the host of CHOGM becomes the ex officio chair.
It is high time President Rajapaksa goaded his government into getting its act together on the human rights front, kept the violent elements in his party on a tight leash, went all out to ensure that the rule of law prevails, and took steps to implement the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission recommendations fully. Thereafter, he may batten down the hatches and wait for the storm to pass.
November 18th, 2013 at 1:25 pm
YES MARCO !! The first three lines of your last para, are well meant.
LOW AND ODOUR HAS TO BE SUPPRESSED AND “””law and order “”” has to be implemented to its fullest.
November 18th, 2013 at 2:18 pm
As children in post Independent Sri Lanka, our history books never gave details of atrocities by Colonial Britain in then Ceylon.
We should now, at 65 yrs after Independence, build a Monument to Lanka people who died at that hands of Colonist Britain and other colonists, the Portuguese & the Dutch. Better later than never.
May be PM Cameron might have laid a wreath at such a Monument in Lanka as he did at a monument in India built for the same reason ?
This dragging pain of ours must be put to rest. And tell the Brits Sri Lanka is not responsible for Caste/poverty Wars of Tamil folk.
November 19th, 2013 at 4:18 am
Thank you all for the valuable comments above showing what we should be doing. I would add the following to that list:-
1. A “No confidence” move against Navi Pillai on the grounds of “conflict of Interests” asking the UNHRC to get her out of dealing with Sri Lankan matters
2. Any HR investigation must include all participants to the conflict including the LTTE, heir financial backers in the West and India for training terrorists.
3. The period covered Must include the full 30 year period and not the last 3 months for the convenience of the LTTE.
November 19th, 2013 at 12:08 pm
We are NOT ALONE in Castigating the British Government and David Cameron for HYPOCRISY on CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY!
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UK Prime Minister Covers Up Crimes Against Humanity – Lectures Sri Lanka on Crimes Against Humanity
By Felicity Arbuthnot
Global Research
November 19, 2013
“Hypocrisy, the most protected of vices.” Moliere (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673.
Last week a little more was learned as to the circumventions in Whitehall and Washington delaying the publication of the findings of Sir John Chilcot’s marathon Inquiry in to the background of the Iraq invasion.
The UK’s Chilcot Inquiry, was convened under then Prime Minister Gordon Brown, to establish the decisions taken by the UK government and military, pre and post invasion. It ran from 24th November 2009 until 2nd February 2011 and cost an estimated £7.5 million. The as yet unpublished Report is believed to run to 1000,000 words.
The stumbling block – more of an Israeli-style “separation barrier” in reality – has been the correspondence between Tony Blair and George W. Bush, prior to an invasion and occupation, which former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan finally told the BBC was: “illegal” and that: “painful lessons” had been learned. (BBC 16th September 2004.) “Lessons” clearly not learned by the current British government.
The communications, in Sir John Chilcot’s words to former Cabinet Secretary Lord O’Donnell related to: “The question when and how the Prime Minister (Tony Blair) made commitments to the US about the UK’s involvement in military action in Iraq, and subsequent decisions on the UK’s continuing involvement, is central to its considerations.”(Guardian 17th July 2013.)
Further: “Chilcot said the release of notes of the conversations between Blair and Bush would serve to ‘illuminate Mr Blair’s position at critical points’ in the run up to war.”
The Inquiry had also been seeking clarification from O’Donnell’s successor Sir Jeremy Heywood regarding inclusion of references to: “the content of Mr Blair’s notes to President Bush, and to the records of discussions between Mr Blair and Presidents Bush and Obama.” The wall remains in place.
Sir Jeremy Heywood, now the country’s most senior civil servant, was Tony Blair’s Private Secretary during the period of the trans-Atlantic lies that led to the Iraq war and during the creation of the Blair regime’s “dodgy dossiers.”
Interestingly too: “O’Donnell had consulted Blair before saying the notes must remain secret.” Effectively, one of the accused, in an action which has destroyed a country, lynched the President, murdered his sons and teenage nephew and caused the deaths of perhaps one and a half million people, decides what evidence can be presented before the Court. Chilcot, has seen the documents but seemingly needs the accused permission to publish them.
A stitch-up of which any “rogue” or “totalitarian” regime, would surely be proud.
Center to the dispute between the Inquiry, Cameron and his ennobled gate keepers is material requested for inclusion in the final Report: “to reflect its analysis of discussions in Cabinet and Cabinet Committees and their significance.”
The documents being denied to the Inquiry include twenty five pieces of correspondence sent by Tony Blair to George W. Bush and one hundred and thirty documents relating to conversations between these lead plotters of Iraq’s destruction. Additionally: “dozens of records of Cabinet meetings.”(i)
Ironically on 31st October 2006, David Cameron voted in favour of a motion brought by the Scottish National Party and Wales’ Plaid Cymru (“The Party of Wales”) calling for an Inquiry into the Blair government’s conduct of the Gulf war.
On 15th June 2009, in a parliamentary debate, the terms of the Chilcot Inquiry were presented in detail, duly recorded in Hansard, the parliamentary records.(ii.)
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Blair’s successor stated: “In order that the committee is as objective and non-partisan as possible, the membership of the committee will consist entirely of non-partisan public figures acknowledged to be experts and leaders in their fields. There will be no representatives of political parties from either side of this House.”
David Cameron, then Leader of Opposition stated piously:
“The whole point of having an Inquiry is that it has to be able to make clear recommendations, to go wherever the evidence leads, to establish the full truth and to ensure that the right lessons are learned … in a way that builds public confidence.”
Cameron was particularly concerned about: “openness.” How times change.
Further, said Cameron:
“The inquiry needs to be, and needs to be seen to be, truly independent and not an establishment stitch-up … The Prime Minister was very clear that the inquiry would have access to all British documents and all British witnesses. Does that mean that the inquiry may not have access to documents from the USA … On the scope of the inquiry, will the Prime Minister confirm that it will cover relations with the United States …”
Cameron concluded with again a demand for “openness and transparency.”
In response, Gordon Brown stated:
“ … I cannot think of an Inquiry with a more comprehensive, wider or broader remit than the one that I have just announced. Far from being restricted, it will cover eight years, from 2001 to 2009. Far from being restricted, it will have access to any documents that are available, and that will include foreign documents that are available in British archives. (Emphasis mine.)
However, four years is a long time in politics and last week, as David Cameron traveled to Sri Lanka for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, it transpired that the documents Sir John Chilcot had been pursuing and been denied for six months have been also blocked by: “officials in the White House and the US Department of State who have refused to sanction any declassification of critical pre-and post-war communications between George W. Bush and Tony Blair.”
David Cameron is apparently also blocking evidence: “ … on Washington’s orders, from being included in the report of an expensive and lengthy British Inquiry.”(iii) Confirmation, were it ever needed, that Britain is the US 51st State, whose puppet Prime Ministers simply obey their Master’s voice.
However, “shame” clearly not being a word in Cameron’s lexicon, he landed in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon, a British Colony 1815-1948) as the above shoddy details broke, in full colonial mode.
Spectacular welcoming ceremonies barely over, he launched in to an entirely undiplomatic, public tirade, at this gathering of the “Commonwealth family of nations” alleging that his host, President Mahinda Rajapaksa was guilty of war crimes during the civil war with the Tamil Tigers. Not disputed is, as any conflict, that terrible crimes were committed on both sides. But these are accusations from the man both covering up the genesis of massacres of genocidal magnitude – and who enjoined in the near destruction of Libya, the resultant lynching of the country’s leader, the murder of his sons and small grand children and uncounted others in another decimation of a country who had threatened no other.
Cameron’s Libya, is Blair’s Iraq. As Iraq, the dying continues daily.
The pontification also from a Prime Minister backing funding for the cannibalistic orientated insurgents in Syria, the beheading, dismembering, looting, displacing, kidnapping, chemical weapons lobbying, child killing, infanticide-bent crazies, including those from his own country.
In Sri Lanka he demanded the country ensure: “credible, transparent and independent investigations into alleged war crimes” and said if this did not happen by the March deadline he arbitrarily imposed, he would press the UN Human Rights Council to hold an international inquiry. Further: “truth telling”, he said, was essential. To cite hypocrisy of breathtaking proportions has become a redundant accusation, but words are failing.
In the event Cameron: “ … left Colombo having failed to secure any concessions from President Rajapaksa or persuade fellow leaders to criticise Sri Lanka’s record in a communique”, reported the Guardian (16th November.)
As the Prime Minster slunk out, President Mahinda Rajapaksa delivered an apt, withering reaction: “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”, he responded.
Ironically, in spite a tragic recent past, Sri Lanka is the only country in South Asia rated high on the Human Development Index. The UK and “allies” recent victims, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan barely make it to the bottom.
David Cameron returned to Britain still having to grapple with how to evade delivering truth to the Chilcot Inquiry.
Hopefully he will read a letter from writer Lesley Docksey (Independent, 18th November 2013.)
“It was British taxpayers’ money that funded the Chilcot Inquiry, and this taxpayer wants her money’s worth. All the British government papers concerning the sorry affair of an invasion of another country belong to this nation, not to the United States, not to Tony Blair, not to the current government. Taxpayers aren’t here to save the faces of politicians.
“Nor is it, in the words of the Cabinet Office, ‘in the public’s interest’ that exchanges between the UK Prime Minister and the US President are kept secret’ – sorry, ‘privileged’ – from those who are paying their wages. The phrase ‘in the public interest’ only ever means the interests of the government of the day.
“Unless Sir John Chilcot and his team can publish a full and honest report, no lessons will be learnt by future governments. But then, if those lessons were learnt, and we the public knew (as in fact we do) what they were, this country would find it difficult to ever invade anywhere ever again.
“So, Sir John, in the words of a former PM, the Duke of Wellington, ‘Publish and be damned!’
Oh, and as David Cameron was lecturing Sri Lanka on “transparency”, the Conservatives were removing: ‘ a decade of speeches from their website and from the main internet library – including one in which David Cameron claimed that being able to search the web would democratise politics by making “more information available to more people.” ’.
“The party removed records of speeches and press releases from 2000 until May 2010. The effect will be to remove any speeches and articles during the Tories’ modernisation period …” (iv.)
Comment again redundant.
Notes
i. informationclearinghouse.info/article36879.htm
ii. publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090615/debtext/90615-0004.htm
iii. independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-us-blocks-publication-of-chilcots-report-on-how-britain-went-to-war-with-iraq-8937772.html
iv. theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/13/conservative-party-archive-speeches-internet
November 19th, 2013 at 12:44 pm
Nationalist governing party ally holds British responsible for creating the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Nov 18, Colombo: An ally of Sri Lanka’s governing party, the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) has accused the British for creating an ethnic conflict in the country.
Referring to the warning of an international inquiry against the country by British Prime Minister David Cameron, JHU General Secretary, Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka charged that the British Premier had no right to call for an international inquiry in violation of the sovereignty of a country.
He noted that such a move would also be in violation of the Commonwealth Charter.
The Minister observed that there was no Tamil or Eelam issue in the country when the British landed in Sri Lanka in 1796 and it was the British who created the ethnic conflict.
According to Ranawaka, the British administration should pay compensation to Sri Lanka for creating a Tamil issue that has resulted in the loss of many lives.
November 19th, 2013 at 12:55 pm
MR fell into many traps after winning the war.
1. LLRC TRAP
2. Dayan J’s UNHRC TRAP
3. CHOGM TRAP
4. NPC election TRAP
5. 13 amendment TRAP
November 19th, 2013 at 1:09 pm
I had pointed put the DANGER of India’s National Oil Corporation involvement in Offshore Oil Exploration & Production in Sri Lankan waters, and the ONGC bidding for new oil blocks off Mannar. I suggested giving them to Vietnam or China, instead.
A high-powered Vietnamese Trade Delegation is NOW visiting Sri Lanka …. CUT AN OIL Exploration & Production deal with Vietnam and KICK INDIA OUT!
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Vietnam trade delegation in Sri Lanka to hold B2B meetings today
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Nov 18, Colombo: A 17-member high powered business delegation from Vietnam is in Sri Lanka to participate in a Business Networking Event organized by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce.
The visit of the delegation is organized by the Vietnam Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Vietnam Embassy in Colombo.
The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce in association with the Sri Lanka-Greater Mekong Subregion Business Council has organized the B2B meetings on Monday, November 18. The meetings will take place at the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce on Nawam Mawatha in Colombo at 10 a.m.
The delegates’ areas of business interests include Agricultural machinery, engines and parts, agricultural products, such as: coffee, pepper, rice, Batteries, Diesel engines, Handicrafts, Medicines, Chemicals, Vietnamese agricultural products, instant noodles Oil, gas, petroleum products, Power Cables, Sugar Vegetable processing and maintaining, Supply the Agri-solutions from farming to finish products, Seedling producers and Rubber foam insulation among other things.
November 22nd, 2013 at 1:28 pm
“Lord” Parekh is a CONGENITAL HALF-WIT if he thinks “Our Prime Minister (David CAmeron) was right to visit Jaffna, commiserate with the Tamils, condemn the army operations which killed thousands of Tamils, demand an investigation into what actually happened during the war and afterwards, and meet the representatives of the Tamil group”!
By the same standards, “Our President Mahinda Rajapaksa should visit Dresden in Germany, commiserate with the Neo-Nazi Germans, condemn the British Airforce operations which killed thousands of Germans, demand an investigation into what actually happened during the war and afterwards, and meet the representatives of the Neo-Nazi group!”
It is only a question of WHOSE OX IS BEING GORED …. Isn’t it …. “Lord” Parekh? To these Neo-Colonialists Sinhala lives don’t matter …. only their global agenda and Tamil votes for local elections do … TO HELL WITH THE TRUTH!
When it is your OX being FATALLY GORED, it is DO TENFOLD UNTO Dresden, Germany AS DONE UNTO to Coventry, England …. Isn’t it … “Lord” Parekh?
BLOODY HYPOCRITES ALL WAVING DOUBLE STANDARDS!
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UK parliament reiterates PM’s edict on Sri Lanka
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Nov 22, London: The UK parliament reiterated the Prime Minister’s call for an international investigation on Sri Lanka if the Sri Lankan government fails to conduct a credible and transparent independent investigation into allegations of war crimes to the satisfaction of the British government.
Debating the UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHIGM) in Colombo in the House of Lords Thursday, Lord Parekh commended the PM for the stand he took at CHOGM in Sri Lanka.
“He was right to go. I think that the Prime Minister of India was not right not to go. Our Prime Minister was right to visit Jaffna, commiserate with the Tamils, condemn the army operations which killed thousands of Tamils, demand an investigation into what actually happened during the war and afterwards, and meet the representatives of the Tamil group,” he said.
Baroness Warsi, the Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office, said the Prime Minister was right to attend the meeting in Colombo since “not talking to people is never the answer.”
“By going, the Prime Minister shone a spotlight on the situation there, and he was the first foreign leader to visit the north of the country since 1948. Because of his decision, journalists were granted access that would otherwise have been impossible to gain, and the local people – the families of the missing -were given an international voice,” she said.
The Minister said the PM was bold and blunt in his views and had a “frank and tough” meeting with the Sri Lankan President.
During the meeting, the PM clearly set out the need for Sri Lanka to make further progress in a number of areas, including a credible and transparent independent investigation into allegations of war crimes, Baroness Warsi said adding that the talks also covered a meaningful political settlement with the north, including demilitarization, and proper implementation of the range of Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission recommendations.
“If the Sri Lankan Government fails to do this, the UK will fully back an international investigation,” the Baroness stressed.
“However, I accept that more needs to be done, not just in Sri Lanka but to ensure that the principles of the Commonwealth charter are applied by the countries of the Commonwealth,” she emphasized.
The Sri Lankan government has flatly rejected Cameron’s call for an independent investigation and the March 2014 deadline saying that Sri Lanka has already set mechanisms in place to address the issues the PM raised and will take more than four years to achieve resolutions to the issues from a 30-year war.
The Indian government yesterday criticized Cameron’s ultimatum saying that it is counterproductive and not their style of handling such issues.
November 22nd, 2013 at 1:38 pm
One must remember that World War 2 was a war of revenge brought upon by nations like Great Britain, France, the US and other European powers against the defeated Germans. The Versailles treaty signed by the nations that conquered Germany was not simply for reparations but also a punitive act so terrible that it beggared Germany. Countless Germans died during the 1930s under the Wiemar Republic since the reparations were demanded in Gold and no nation worked with Germany to pay her debt while keeping her economy on sound ground.
This calamity directly led to the rise of the Nazi Party who when in power created the world’s most powerful military out of the ashes of the Wiemar Republic and retook the same lands that imposed such harsh terms. When France fell Hitler demanded they sign their surrender in the same train coach in which the Germans had to sign their defeat after the end of World war one giving credence that world war 2 on the European stage was an act of vengeance.
When Germany was defeated a second time it was mainly due to the carpet bombings by Great Britain and the US. These incendiary bombings were so devastating people literally vaporized from the heat. When Germany collapsed both the allied and Russian troops engaged in an orgy of rape and pillage of Germany and her women.
There is a great book that exposes the corruption of the US, her cultural and economic decline and even mentions Sri Lanka and her rising stand on the world stage. The book is about a corrupt, hypocritical, and elitist government hell bent on destroying the nation it governs and the US military that rises to overthrow this government in a coup. Such a book has never been written in recent times. There is humor in this book as both the Tamil Tigers and President Rajapakse is mentioned to the detriment of the Tamil Tigers. The Book is called “The Crucible of Decline” by Rocco S. Bagaladi (Amazon.books or Kindle books). Sri Lanka is often a forgotten nation but not in “The Crucible of Decline” as her potential is stated by her victory over a 30 year long war led by President Rajapakse, India’s tactical loss and the importance of the Trincomalee harbor.
November 23rd, 2013 at 1:05 pm
With respect to my previous statement, I HAVE NOT repeated myself………..Thank you EDITOR – Lankaweb-JAYASIRI
November 24th, 2013 at 11:10 am
GREAT Summary of David Cameron’s HYPOCRISY & DOUBLE STANDARDS!
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UK Fails To Turn CHOGM13 Into Rights Tribunal – Analysis
By Kalinga Seneviratne
IDN, EurasiaReview.com
November 24, 2013
In his opening address to the Commonwealth leaders’ summit (CHOGM) in Colombo mid-November, Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapakse concluded his speech by quoting from the Buddha. “‘Let not one take notice of faults of other’s or what they have done or not done. Let one be concerned only about what one has done and left undone,” he told assembled leaders from 53 member countries in an obvious swipe at the British PM’s pre-summit tirades on human rights violation by Sri Lanka.
Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron under intense pressure from supporters of the vanquished Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) residing in the UK to boycott the summit, came to Colombo to press for an independent inquiry on the final stages of Sri Lanka’s war on terror, where 40,000 people are alleged to have died in final battles in May 2009, with LTTE’s entire leadership being killed.
Cameron’s behavior in Sri Lanka, typical of the old colonial masters, triggered public anger in the country, with many local media commentators pointing out Britain’s own war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and their involvement in the NATO bombing of civilian targets in Libya leading to the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.
“He too can be questioned in return,” argued the Daily Mirror in a commentary. “British counter-terrorism legislation and handbooks on interrogation techniques provide ample material for counter-question. Then there is his country’s complicity in atrocities committed by the USA in that country’s ‘war on terror’ and the many crimes of the Empire.”
Pointing out that the The Independent UK newspaper has exclusively reported that the Cameron government is blocking the publication of the (Sir John) Chilcot report on how Britain went to war with Iraq, the Island newspaper stated in an editorial that, it is doing so in view of strong objections from the US to the release of key evidence. “The Independent expose could not have come at a worse time for Cameron,” noted the Island. “He has been left with egg on his face though he is trying to keep a stiff upper lip in typical British style. While urging others to address accountability issues he is sitting on the findings of a high-level inquiry into a war waged on the basis of falsified intelligence reports.”
Cameroon left the summit leaders after the opening session to visit the Tamil stronghold of Jaffna where he was greeted by wailing relatives of those killed during the war, a scene comparable to the civil war days when LTTE staged similar events for western cameras. He met local leaders, an act seen in the country as hostile to the hosts and breach of normal diplomatic protocols.
He then came back to Colombo and held a press conference to announce a deadline of March 2014 for Sri Lanka to establish a commission of inquiry, failing which he threatened to work with UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, to push for an external inquiry. During the press conference he refused to take any questions from Sri Lankan journalists, and only answered “friendly” queries posed to him by the accompanying British media.
Sri Lanka’s retired cricket hero Muttiah Muralidharan, an ethnic Tamil, told the Sri Lankan media that during a meeting with Cameron he had pointed out to him that he has been misled and that there have been a lot of developments that have taken place in Sri Lanka since the end of the war in 2009, that have benefited Tamils.
‘Hostile’ Channel 4 Granted Visa
But, that will not deter the hostile British media, especially the Channel 4 television channel, which in spite of their hostility towards Sri Lanka, was granted visas to cover the summit. The Channel 4 crew was not allowed to proceed to Jaffna by hostile locals, who stopped the train carrying them and forced the crew to return to Colombo. Channel 4 is widely disliked in Sri Lanka for broadcasting controversial anti-Sri Lanka video clips, perceived to be provided by pro-LTTE groups in Europe, without practicing normal journalist procedures of authentication and balance.
In the typically self-righteous style of the British media, Channel 4 journalist Jonathan Miller, who as been instrumental in producing these reports just prior to events such as the UNHRC meetings in Geneva, referring to his visit to Sri Lanka to cover CHOGM wrote an open letter to Sri Lankan journalists supporting their campaign for more media freedom in the country. He sees any local journalist writing positively about developments in Sri Lanka as government propagandists, while unable to figure out why a majority of Sri Lankans still support the Rajapakse government and detest the channel’s biased reporting.
“So many people gave us secret thumbs-ups or whispered, winked or nodded their support,” he claimed in a blog post that was widely distributed via internet by opponents of the Rajapakse administration. “I’m talking about those of you who live with such harassment yourselves, day in, day out, and don’t – or can’t – complain. Those of you who confided in me that doing what you do is sometimes really hard.” He complained about not being given access to the press conference given by President Rajapkase, but, did not comment on why his own Prime Minister did not take questions from Sri Lankan journalists.
The failure of Cameron to get any backing within the Commonwealth – even from strong allies such as Australia and New Zealand – to censure Sri Lanka on human rights at the summit, is indicative of the strong feelings within Asia and Africa in particular of the West’s double standards on human rights.
When he was asked by a radio talkshow host in Sydney why he has not heeded to calls by pro-LTTE Sri Lankan Tamil groups in Australia to boycott the summit, Australian PM Tony Abbot said that to “live without the fear of war is also a human right” and the Sri Lanka government has achieved that.
At the end of the summit, Singapore PM Lee Hosien Loong told Channel News Asia that outside countries should not try to force reconciliation on Sri Lanka, nor is it their business to intervene in another country’s internal affairs. “If we had a problem in Singapore of some sort, either religious problem or racial problem, and somebody else outside says ‘let me come and help you, one group or the other’, I think we will have a problem. Because we will consider this our domestic, internal, national affair, and not something that outsiders should get involved with, however good the intention,” he said.
“Whatever the views on Sri Lanka, it’s clear that the end of the civil war four years ago has changed the country. There are new highways, new buildings – a lot of the new infrastructure here is donated by countries like India and China, two of the largest development aid giver to Sri Lanka,” he noted.
Meanwhile, India, which helped to garner support for an anti-Sri Lanka resolution at the UNHRC in March 2013, has criticized Cameron’s behavior in Sri Lanka. Times of India reported quoting a senior government source, who has said that Cameron’s style of addressing human rights issues in Sri Lanka would be counter productive.
The Benefit of Doubt
India’s Hindu newspaper’s strategic affairs editor Praween Swamy pointing out British war crimes in the modern era beginning with the bombing of Dresden during the Second World War (1939-1945), questioned the reliability of allegations made against Sri Lanka. “Making sense of the killing that unfolded in Sri Lanka in the last days of the Eelam War isn’t easy: we don’t know how many lives it claimed or, indeed, whether a genocide took place at all,” he noted. He also criticized the statistics quoted in the UN Panel of Experts led by former Indonesian Attorney-General Marsuki Darusman pointing out that most of it was estimates based on unreliable figures from a local headman and analysis of satellite images.
Sri Lankan government has refused to accept the credibility of the Darusman report, because the UN has told them that the sources of its information will remain classified for 20 years from the date of the report’s release on March 30, 2011.
“There is very little doubt that the Sri Lankan forces did commit crimes. They worked with savage paramilitaries who were out to settle scores with the LTTE. It doesn’t follow from this, though, that Sri Lanka’s campaign against the LTTE was genocide,” argued Swamy. “The real question is a simple one: when, and how much, is it ethical to kill in war? Through the history of modern warfare, commanders have confronted the same dilemmas that Sri Lanka faced in 2009, or Winston Churchill confronted in 1945.”
Rajapakse said as much when in response to Cameron’s threat to haul Sri Lanka in front of an international inquiry he told a media briefing that “people in glass houses should not throw stones.” And he also asked, “Is it a crime to have saved lives …? People were dying. We stopped it.”
Ideally, if the Commonwealth is to discuss human rights and accountability, they should have discussed not only Sri Lanka, but how Tony Blair could be made accountable for taking Britain to war against Iraq on false intelligence reports, and how Britain (along with Canada) should account for high civilian casualties in NATO bombings in Libya – that could go well beyond 100,000 according to many estimates. In addition, Commonwealth must also make fellow citizen former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans accountable for promoting the Right to Protect (R2P) formula that has brought anarchy to Libya.
There have been calls from African and Sri Lankan commentators for the Commonwealth to take up the issues such as the bias against Africa in particular at the ICC (International Criminal Court) and the R2P concept promoted by the Geneva-based International Crisis Group headed by Evans. Both these organizations tend to be blind when it comes to western violation of human rights, which are often described by western media as “collateral damage”.
Such issues will never get through the Commonwealth consensus process as Britain along with its western allies will block it. India by boycotting the CHOGM for the second successive time has shown that G20, East Asia Summit and APEC are more important forums for them. Only 23 of the 53 Heads of States attended the Colombo summit. Such a low participation rate of heads of state has been a trend at CHOGMs in recent years. Thus, if the Commonwealth is not able to reflect the views of its majority membership from the developing world, this relic of the British Empire will die a natural death.
November 24th, 2013 at 11:44 am
Bravo! FINALLY some action to DEBUNK the 40,000 deaths figure in the last phase of Eelam war IV!
But MORE THAN THAT, this census will identify ALL CASUALTIES of LTTE terror ISLANDWIDE!
However, the GOSL should be careful to CROSS-VERIFY this Census Information provided by Eelamist Tamil households …. for Manipulating Records and Disseminating False Information in their Forte’!
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Island-wide household census will determine number affected by conflict
By Franklin R. Satyapalan
Island.lk
November 23, 2013
The Secretary to the Ministry Public Administration and Home Affairs Bandara P. Abeyakoon said the government launched an internationally-recognized island-wide household census to ascertain first-hand persons affected by the conflict, gone missing and feared dead or disabled after 1982.
He said that in the past, a similar household census was conducted ad hoc and as a result there were conflicting reports that some 40,000 to 60,000 persons went missing during the conflict.
He said that the Director General of the Department of Census and Statistics D. C. A. Gunawardena has been tasked to implement this project.
Gunawardena said that he was carrying out the instructions of the Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunga who serves as Chairman of the Task Force to implement the Lessons Learnt Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) recommendations to set in motion a scientifically designed household census
He said that the objective of this island-wide household census is to ascertain the number affected after 1982 and also gather first-hand information on the scale and circumstances of death and injury of civilians as well as all damage to property during the conflict.
The census, funded by the government and the department, was tasked to conclude its work before the December 20, 2013 deadline.
He said that his departmental officers at the district level were summoned to Colombo for workshops conducted at the Hector Kobbekaduwa HARTI auditorium so that the trainers could train Divisional Secretariats and Grama Niladhari officers to carry out the census scientifically.