Sri Lanka News Updates with Discussions

VANCOUVER The owner of a rusty freighter that landed in B.C. with 492 Tamil refugee claimants aboard two years ago has been charged with human smuggling.

Kunarobinson Christhurajah is accused of organizing, inducing and aiding the human smuggling operation that brought the Tamils by boat to British Columbia. Also charged is Lesly Jana Emmanuel, an alleged accomplice. Both were aboard when the vessel that was intercepted by Canadian authorities.

The freighter, the MV Sun Sea, landed off Victoria in August 2010 one year after another boat, the MV Ocean Lady, arrived on the B.C. coast carrying 76 Tamil migrants.

TORONTO A former director of an organization outlawed by the Canadian government over its ties to Sri Lankan rebels said Thursday he was living in fear after his car was destroyed in an unexplained fire.

Kamal Navaratnam`s 2002 Honda CRV was parked in his Toronto driveway when it went up in flames at about 3 a.m. Monday.

The car was completely destroyed, said Constable Tony Vella, a Toronto police spokesman. The cause of the fire was listed as undetermined. Officers are looking into it but foul play is not suspected at this point.

Toronto More than two years after the smuggling ship MV Ocean Lady arrived off the West Coast carrying 76 Sri Lankan asylum seekers, the first public hearing to determine whether to accept them as refugees took place on Monday.

My life is in danger in my country, an ethnic Tamil man told the Immigration and Refugee Board, which ordered that his name could not be published to protect his safety. I fear the army, police and the pro-government Tamil militias in Sri Lanka.

There has been so much excitement among the wetamizh at the possibility of arresting so called war criminals as a result of civil cases filed by various agencies in the recent past. Actually, it reminds me of a bunch of ants scurrying around a disturbed ant hill.

Anyway, once the legal bills have been paid, I wonder what the wetamizh would be to left with. We saw what they were left with after hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in the thirty year misadventure in SL. People that don`t
learn from their mistakes have the misfortune of repeating them.

That is my prediction. The lawsuit seeks damages for violations of international, Sri Lankan and domestic law under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) and Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA). These are not two separate acts the TVPA was passed in the 1990`s to codify a cause of action for a subset of claims under the ATCA which was originally enacted in the 18th Century.

Both ATCA and TVPA are NOT part of the Criminal Code. They are part of the body of Civil law which is an entirely different matter from criminal.

Thiviya is all confused in her last post about who commenced action in the ICC against Libya.........she thinks it is the UNHRC.......but here is what appears in the ICC webpage:

`On 26 February, the United Nations Security Council decided unanimously to refer the situation in Libyan Arab Jamahiriya since 15 February 2011 to the ICC Prosecutor. On 3 March 2011 the ICC Prosecutor announced his decision to the open an investigation in the situation in Libya, which is assigned by the Presidency to Pre-Trial Chamber I`

In my post of June 3 I provided a detailed rationale for why the ICC does not have jurisdiction over SL. The ICC was founded under the Rome Statute and Sri Lanka did not sign or ratify the Rome Statute and therefore are not a State Party. The US and Israel unsigned the Rome Statute and are no longer State Parties. So SL is in very good company.

If a country is NOT a State Party the only way that the ICC can acquire jurisdiction to prosecute is by way of a Resolution of the UN Security Council. Security Council resolutions have to be passed unanimously (and not by a simple or absolute majority). As long as Russia and China are members of the Security Council that is highly unlikely.

Statement by the High Commissioner for Human Rights

NAVI PILLAY, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the eighteenth session of the Human Rights Council was taking place against the background of towering human rights challenges, such as the food emergency in the Horn of Africa and fears of a new global recession. The dire emergency in the Horn of Africa was both the product of devastating natural phenomena, and the failure of governments individually and collectively to meet their preventive and remedial human rights obligations. These included the responsibility of effective governance, and human rights-based international cooperation. Further, there was no doubt that the deliberate obstruction of human rights and humanitarian work had exacerbated already desperate conditions. The spiralling effects of the crisis were now engulfing the Horn of Africa where as many as 750,000 lives may be at risk. A denial of the right to food undermined the right to health, thus ultimately putting at risk the most fundamental of all human rights, that was, the right to life. While ensuring people in need were fed today, efforts should also be devoted to long-term sustainability. On the effects on human rights of some States` sovereign debt crises and the consequent sharp decline of the stock market which threatened to produce another global economic recession, the High Commissioner said that as the debt crisis unfolded across Europe, America and elsewhere, they were witnessing a wave of drastic social cuts, and a worrying trend of legal reforms to contain budget deficits. It was imperative that they examined and addressed the potential repercussions of economic upheavals on those people who were already living in precarious and marginalized situations, such as women and children, minorities, indigenous peoples and people with disabilities. All Member States must consider that austerity measures alone may not work to address economic woes. Human rights issues including education, employment, and in general the opportunity of a life in dignity, as well as transparency, accountability, and good governance must not be neglected.

I finally had the time to watch Agreed Upon Lies which is a counter to the Ch 4 Video.

My personal views are immaterial but I do have some observations:

1. It explains why there is no serious move to by the UN and other major players to prosecute the GoSL for war crimes.

2. It explains why that the IC took immediate action against Qaddafi but sat on their hands when it came to SL

Why? Because the UN and the Western Nations were gathering their own intelligence which did not support what the diaspora were saying.

What does a philanthropist buy the wife as a present? Why, a concrete box, of course. A concrete box by the `starchitect` Tadao Ando with views of paradise

The Japanese architect Tadao Ando calls it `the house in Sri Lanka` and he has set it against a paradise on earth. White sandy beaches, dotted with palm trees and huts draped in coconut leaves, weave around cliffs in Mirissa on the southern tip of Sri Lanka. Crocodiles, monkeys, elephants and leopards roam freely in the jungle behind it.

There is so much misinformation and misrepresentation by our resident peelam legal experts that I thought I should quote what the ICC itself has to say about Jurisdiction and Admissibility.

[The Court may exercise jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. These crimes are defined in detail in the Rome Statute. In addition, a supplementary text of the Elements of Crimes provides a breakdown of the elements of each crime.

The Court has jurisdiction over individuals accused of these crimes. This includes those directly responsible for committing the crimes as well as others who may be liable for the crimes, for example by aiding, abetting or otherwise assisting in the commission of a crime. The latter group also includes military commanders or other superiors whose responsibility is defined in the Statute.

Thiviya and rest of the weThamiz brains trust including that walking wonder DVL have finally figured out that I am Asoka Weerasinghe........but that is only if my last name is not Bassanayake.......wow!!....these guys are brilliant......who would have thunk it.......and the sharpest kinfe in the drawer (Thiviya) figured it out by analyzing my writing style.....LOL!!.......there is a way to analyse writing styles but I won`t go in to that here....you know what they say about a little knowledge being dangerous......these guys exemplify that......no wonder they are no closer to getting their Ezham.......

[Faulting UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon for his continued `pattern and practice of criminal behavior by rejecting the recommendation of his own Panel that he appoint a Commission of Inquiry into GOSL war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Tamils,` Professor Francis Boyle, expert in International Law and Professor at the University of Illinois School of Law, told TamilNet that `Ban Ki-Moon is an absolute disgrace to the lofty standards of the United Nations Charter and the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights,` and that Moon should be prevented from being elected for a second term.]

From what I have read here are the main findings :

1. The panel says it found `credible` allegations of human rights violations committed by the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tiger rebels during final stages of the conflict between September 2008 and May 2009.

There is quantum difference between so called credible allegations and proving them. And in any case, human rights violations are not the same as war crimes. Please note that even in Canada people are found in violation of human rights. The diaspora either by ignorance or design confuse the two.

A month ago, a Tamil television personality named Ragavan Paranchothy won the federal Conservative nomination in Scarborough Southwest.
Almost immediately, he changed his name to Gavan Paranchothy, with a new Twitter tag (@gavanp), Facebook page and fresh websites that no longer mention his Tamil background.

It`s not the first time Mr. Paranchothy has adopted a different first name. When he travelled with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to Asia in 2009, he was T. Raghavan Paranchothy, the T standing for Thayan, the legal name by which he is also known.