‘Champions of Change’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 January 2012, 15:02 GMT]
Even as the nation of the Scots enjoys limited autonomy in the United Kingdom, its desire for independence coupled with other political and economic developments compels the leader of the Scottish National Party to optimistically assert that Scotland and other similar small independent nation-states will be the champions of change in the near future. On the other hand, as the efficiently functioning de facto state of the Eezham Tamils was crushed by Sri Lanka with support of world powers in May 2009, there is a need to soar above mere war crimes calls and other similar discourses, which only blunt the aims of our political goals. The year 2012 must involve reinvigorated efforts to assert sovereignty of the Eezham Tamils and to set the moral victory of our national liberation struggle as a standard to natural allies, writes TamilNet Economic and Geopolitical Analyst in the Asia Pacific.

Full text of the article by TamilNet Economic and Geopolitical Analyst in the Asia Pacific, follows:

The beginning of a year always flows with hope. In Tamil we have the saying that there will be a way when January (Thai) is born. Hope is infectious and we feel happy and ourselves become more hopeful when we see others, particularly of our kind, overflow with hope.

It is in this spirit that we appreciate the article titled “How Scotland will Lead the World in 2012” written by Alex Salmond, first minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party. Although his concepts, including his conceptualization of nations and his idea of globalization as an emancipatory force, lack the clarity of social analysis, we admire his confidence for the Scottish Nation to Lead the World in 2012 and his conviction that “It is not the size of a nation that is important, but the size of its ambition and of the contribution that it can make to the world.”

The optimism of another Nation without State like us should inspire us to have greater hope and motivate us to get out of the lethargy of silence and inaction into which we have dumped ourselves since the Mu'l'livaaykkaal genocide of May 2009, particularly because our achievements as a Nation without State are far greater than those of the Scottish nation.

We had established and managed a de facto state against a brutal enemy supported by powerful global establishments, and despite being labelled a ‘non-state actor’ by many in the West, we exercised a moral high ground in principle and in practice that our enemies and their friends consistently failed to reciprocate.

The political and ideological comparisons that we make with other struggles must be purely for the purpose of further advancement of our struggle and our natural allies of Nations without State and the oppressed peoples in the Nations with State.

We along with our natural allies are on one side of the fence and the 193 global establishments with state power are on the other side of the fence. We should never forget this fundamental strategic division in the world order in dealing with our natural allies as well as dealing with our common opponents in the global establishments of former imperialists and agent imperialists on the other side of the fence.

It is because we as well as our natural allies do not understand and apply this strategic division, our common enemy is able to divide us and defeat us. Because some of us have not learnt this, the very enemies who facilitated our genocide are making use of naive elements within our polity to create illusory battles like war crimes, human rights etc.

The global establishments are divided into gangs like the two parties in the “democracies” and camouflage themselves by their apparent cosmetic differences while safeguarding their common interests whether in war or in peace.

They trapped us in the peace trap of the CFA to organize Sri Lanka’s military victory and to deprive us of our hard earned fruits of a politically consistent armed struggle. Those who have closely followed the LTTE documents of the 2006 talks that were released recently would understand how the CFA was used by the powers strategically to arm the Sri Lankan government, despite it deliberately violating numerous of the agreements, and to ‘disarm’ the LTTE, despite their eagerness in practice to conform to most of the clauses.

It can be bluntly said that this ‘war through peace’ was the political prelude to the ‘war through annihilation’ that happened in Mu’l’livaaikkaal genocide.

These very same powers are now engaged in crafting another peace and reconciliation trap to disarm Eezham Tamils of their political consciousness. The agents of these powers and failed peace-brokers will also seek to influence the Tamil polity towards a non-descript and ‘home-grown’ solution, without even allowing Eezham Tamils to seek the path of applying ‘remedial sovereignty’.

Attempting to divert the focus of the masses in Tamil Nadu and the Tamil diaspora, the powers also want Tamils to believe that ‘Gandhian means’ would work locally in the island, conveniently forgetting what response the Sinhala state gave to the satyagraha protests of the 50’s, 60’s and early 70’s.

Likewise, the UNHRC drama will continue for few more years till they politically disarm us and allow completion of the structural genocide of our nation by the Sinhala state by permanently mutilating our homeland as well as our will to liberate it. That is why groups like the ICG on behalf of the global establishments do not want us to speak of genocide, though Eezham Tamils are daily experiencing the genocide as a structural process as reports from all the districts of North and East clearly reveal.

We need also to tell the oppressed peoples in the Nations with State that the global establishments ‘defeated’ us as a pre-emptive move to prevent the New World Order we are fighting for from emerging. Even many of the socialists and leftists do not understand this though it was clearly stated 50 years ago by the then Chinese leaders that socialism cannot be built without completing the national liberation.

This is not a magical slogan but rather a simple fact that socialism cannot be built while imperialism exists and imperialism will exist even if one nation is oppressed by another nation. This is the reason why the ‘military defeat’ of the Eezham Tamil nation’s sole representatives, who were creating a new model of nation-state and society, was hailed by reactionaries world over, while genuine progressives in South Asia and elsewhere mourned it.

Beyond being just a loss for the Eezham Tamils, the powers engineered solution that was dealt to the LTTE was an immense loss to the struggling peoples of the world. This is an opinion that was also shared by the CCOMPOSA in their 5th conference held in March 2011.

Some who do not understand the cause and effect nature of events and think in terms of arbitrary time frames may even argue that changing the world order may not happen in “our life time”; but crude reality states that the world order has to change sooner than we can imagine because of the impending world economic crisis and the environmental crisis.

These crises indicate that the world, and especially nations that do not have political representation in the established global order through their own states, are crying for change but conceptual and political leadership are lacking. If we work in this direction, providing such a leadership for Nations without States and the oppressed in the Nation states through our rich experience, surely 2012 and beyond will be hopeful for Eezham Tamils and our natural allies.

Let those who have been bearing and who still want to bear the cross of ‘war crimes enquiry’ and those who want to operate within the established ‘Human Rights’ paradigm set by the Establishments and the NGO outfits carry on the burden of the cross. But, Eezham Tamils as a nation should realise the most important and strategic significance of taking the lead role of forming the conceptual and political leadership necessary for the powerful emergence of Tamil geopolitics.

Taking the spirit of the ‘Tamil Sovereignty Cognition’ that was released on Heroes Day 2011, let the year 2012 mark a beginning of a political trend that will have sovereignty for the Eezham Tamil nation as the primary focus of our discourse.

We need to be enlightened from the lessons we have learnt by these traps in war as well as in peace and we need to take this message not only among ourselves but also among our natural allies.

Unless we fully grasp the concept and importance of Tamil sovereignty and the leading role played by the Tigers during the CFA where they literally earned sovereignty, we cannot fulfil our historical task with due efficiency.

We are also at a conjuncture where the rogue states in global establishments are projecting our predicament in Mu’l’livaaikkaal as the threat of a final solution to national liberation struggles.

Before the ‘Sri Lankan solution’ is established as a negative example, we need to work to project our experiences as a nation that ran a successful de facto state in face of overwhelming odds and our resilience to carry our struggle up to Mu’l’livaaikkaal and beyond as a positive example of the moral victory of our national cause.

This is the leadership role we have to play among the Nations without State by teaching the lessons we have learnt through our practical struggle and our experience combined with the optimism of the leader of the Scottish National Party that “independent small nations will be champions of change”.

External Links:

The Economist:

How Scotland will lead the world

ICG Report on Eezham Tamil women receives flak from diaspora feminist

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 January 2012, 23:49 GMT]
In an article published on Countercurrents, an Indian online journal, Janani Paramsothy, a student in a British University, criticized the ICG report on Eezham Tamil women report for having deliberately ignored the real problem of genocide of Eezham Tamils, in which, sexual violence on Tamil women is an essential component. Ms. Paramsothy, who had been a vocal participant in protests in the UK during the period of Mu’l’livaikaal genocide and after, came down heavily on the ICG for maligning genuine voices in the diaspora addressing the national question for having produced a distorted picture of the progress of women achieved under the LTTE. “Tamil women- safe under LTTE, raped and pillaged under Sri Lankan forces with no one to support them... For Tamil women to be safe under a Sri Lankan state is simply impossible”, she said.

Ms. Paramsothy, a second generation Eezham Tamil woman in the UK, is a law student at University College London.

The political and intellectual intervention of Eezham Tamil feminists in the diaspora on the plight that their fellow nationals face in the homeland is positive in the sense that they alone can provide an authentic representation of the problems that the women in the homeland face owing to their lived experience as both women and Tamils, remarked a Tamil academic.

Emphasising on the need for such feminists to build solidarity with women in the homeland, Tamil Nadu and elsewhere in the diaspora, the academic added that the articulation of gender based violence that Tamil women face, within the paradigms of the structural genocide that the Eezham Tamil nation experiences in the homeland, as has emerged in Ms. Paramsothy’s article, and a co-ordinated effort to act on the same understanding alone can solve the problems of Eezham Tamil women.

Excerpts from Ms. Paramsothy’s article titled ‘ICG report on Tamil women is woefully wrong’ in Countercurrents follow:

“This current report, like the ones before it, plays an interesting game. It accuses the Sri Lankan state while excusing it, exposes the smaller problems while masking the underlying bigger one, and although it cannot be entirely dismissed out of hand, as it provides essential evidence about what is happening to our women in Sri Lanka, it is such an apologist work that it cannot be regarded as having the final say on what the real situation is in Sri Lanka.”

“First and foremost, Western culture generally needs to let go of this illusion of ultimate control that they think they hold and of the accompanying notion where they think they know what is best for everyone everywhere. This lingering ignorance from imperialist years, leads to many a misunderstanding, some too grave to allow.”

“They cannot dictate to us what is right and what is wrong, without taking into account what our own understanding of the situation may be. And our understanding of the situation here is not parallel to that of the ICG’s since it fundamentally ignores the genocidal nature of what has been done.”

“In this event, the report appears somewhat patronising and a little removed from reality. Although comments of a very serious nature have been made, some of the additional comments appear so misguided, it is hard to know whether to laugh or be angry.”

“It appears- and this is observable with many international actors who have failed the Eelam Tamils- that the ICG simply cannot face up to the fact that it is they who have been wrong and we who have been right about Sri Lanka all along. The international community, its NGOs and its media have spectacularly failed in the case of Sri Lanka, leading to the loss of tens of thousands of lives and they are all still in denial. Therefore, instead of admitting that they have done wrong, they appear to choose to justify their actions by pointing fingers at what the Tamils have done.”

They say that the Sri Lankan government dismiss allegations ‘as part of an LTTE conspiracy to garner international sympathy and demonise Sri Lanka’s “war heroes”’ while in part, helping to do just that themselves.

“This is illustrated widely throughout the report- in the many references to the diaspora for example, in which we have been made to appear like bloodhounds intent on the destruction and humiliation of Sri Lanka.”

“So despite the fact that those people suffering out there are our family members, our friends and our kin, despite the fact that many of the Diaspora are people who have suffered in Sri Lanka first hand themselves, despite the fact that we- Diaspora and inhabitants of Sri Lanka alike- consider ourselves, and indeed are one single entity, we have been painted as the scavengers who would gladly sacrifice our kin in homeland, just so we can gain ground on our ‘elusive political solution’.”

“The entire point of Tamil Eelam is to ensure that those very people are not sold out, not because we want to win points in some imaginary sparring game with the government, but because there is no other solution to check the protracted genocide of the Tamils that has been happening ever since Sri Lanka gained ‘independence’ in 1948.”

“The report itself acknowledges that there was a ‘degree’ of equality under the LTTE, many women have openly said their lives were infinitely better under the LTTE- maybe because they weren’t subjects of mass rape then, any citizen living under any state has their life dictated by that state to an extent- this does not diminish their equality in any way, and since the LTTE were first and foremost a military organisation, engaged in war, it is perhaps understandable that some freedoms had to take a back seat to national security, especially since, these weren’t not exclusively restricted for women.”

““The male dominated leadership of the organisation prioritised the fight for a separate Tamil nation, and their own survival, over all other goals” states the report. Let us conveniently forget the fact that the LTTE’s decision making body, its Central Committee had five women in a twelve member team. Let us take their statement as true. Even then, it is entirely reasonable because without the success of the war effort, for men and women alike, there is nothing. “

“This has been clearly demonstrated now. Tamil women- safe under LTTE, raped and pillaged under Sri Lankan forces with no one to support them. It’s quite a simple equation really. For Tamil women to be safe under a Sri Lankan state is simply impossible.”

“The problem is that the Sri Lankan state does not intend to address our concerns. It is not because they are indifferent about our suffering; it is because they are active agents bringing it about. They want it to happen because it all fits in with their pre-planned attack on the Tamil nation as a whole.”

“When the report points out that the government ‘carefully nurtured nationalist sentiment within Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese Buddhist majority to build support for its efforts to destroy the LTTE’ it is not entirely true. This sentiment already existed; it is what the government were voted in on and what successive Sinhala governments have all been nurturing over the years.”

“Reading and hearing about what is happening to our sisters while sitting in England is hard enough. I don’t actually face the physical threat- although many of our Sinhala neighbours here have made many verbal ones over the internet- yet we still feel violated. Our empathy with our sisters leads to fear and anger. We as Diaspora Tamil women also share the additional feeling of helplessness sometimes because we cannot physically go out to Sri Lanka and stop this violence ourselves.”

“Often when we were younger, many activists would talk of forming our own ‘human shield’ around the ‘safe zones’ to protect the people. As we all know now though, this probably would not have deterred the government. They would have shot us all.”

“Tamil women actually on the island have a greater need to protect themselves. The feelings we feel are only magnified and exacerbated. More importantly, they have the chance to physically be there and protect one another. Indeed it is a chance they cannot afford to pass by. And since being a shield won’t work, they have to be the sword.”

“In conclusion, the ICG report, although acknowledging some important truths is fundamentally flawed. In an attempt to wash over their own mistakes, they have wiped under the carpet, the most important issue of all- the genocide of Tamils, in which process sexual violence against Eelam Tamil women is part and parcel- and in doing so, have produced a severely constricted view of how to deal with the issue.”

Chronology:

02.01.12  ICG Report on Eezham Tamil women receives flak fro..

25.12.11  ‘ICG report fails to cover genocide-intended sexua..

UK Tamil groups to campaign jointly for Sri Lanka's war crimes probe

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 December 2011, 00:33 GMT]
Several Tamil activist groups, Tamil affiliates of British political parties, and Tamil journalists confederation in the UK in a meeting held at the British Parliament building at 7:00 p .m. Thursday organized by the British Tamil Forum (BTF) to mark the forth coming Human Rights Day, resolved to combined forces to pressure the international community to conduct an dependent investigation into war-crimes committed during the Sri Lanka's civil war, sources in UK said.

In a communique distributed to the media, the Tamil groups said that they will solicit cooperation to support the campaign for an International Independent Investigation (III) from expatriate Tamils living in other parts of the world.

Considering that Sri Lanka's security forces, with tacit directives from the high level political leaders, including Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse, committed mass atrocity crimes including war-crimes and crimes against humanity, the meeting discussed ways to effectively coordinate evidence collection and to mobilize expatriate support to the campaign, an attendee to the meeting said.

"The forthcoming 19th UN Human Rights Meeting scheduled for March 2012 added urgency to the plan of action discussed at the above meeting," a BTF spokesperson said.

Members from Tamils for Conservative, Tamils for Labor, British Tamil Forum, Tamil Solidarity, Act Now, International Tami Journalists Forum, Tamil Media Organizations, independent journalists, Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), and TransNational Government of Tamil Eelam attended the discussion, according to the organizers.

Channel-4 complied with broadcasting code, UK regulator rules

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 October 2011, 03:28 GMT]
The independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries, the OfCom (Office of Communications) ruled that the Channel-4 video, "Sri Lanka's Killing Fields," that the documentary did not breach any broadcasting code, The Guardian said. As part of the campaign orchestrated by Colombo to discredit the documentary, OfCom received 118 complaints about issues including impartiality, offensiveness and the broadcast of misleading material, but concluded it had not breached the broadcasting code on any of these counts.

Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, which focused on a UN investigation into alleged war crimes during the final weeks of the country's civil war, included a number of images of murdered and tortured bodies, and also of partially clothed women who, it was suggested in the documentary, had been sexually abused prior to their death.

The regulator said: "Channel 4 has a unique public service remit to provide programming that is challenging, diverse and likely to provoke debate. Consequently, the broadcaster has a history of broadcasting very challenging material from war zones (including graphic footage) and seeking out the voices and views of those who may not be represented.

"The images included in this programme, whilst brutal and shocking, would not have exceeded the expectations of the audience for this Channel 4 documentary scheduled well after the watershed with very clear warnings about the nature of the content."

Human Rights watchdogs, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and International Crisis Group (ICG) sponsored screening of the Sri Lanka's Killing Fields in several Western political capitals to decision makers. Colombo, stung by the international outcry produced its own version of the events in a rebuttal video.

External Links:

Guardian:

Channel 4's Sri Lanka documentary cleared by Ofcom

Fox connections with Sri Lanka raises questions on UK national security

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 October 2011, 21:50 GMT]
Shady associations and modus operandi of British Defence Minister Liam Fox in his dealings with the genocidal regime of Sri Lanka endanger the national security of UK, media reports from UK said this week. The revelations, following information through Wikileaks cables on the handling of Sri Lanka by the US Asst. Secretary of State Robert Blake, show how certain individuals sitting in the world Establishments pervert international relations upholding global order of justice, which particularly affects the case of the Eezham Tamils, said diaspora Tamil circles in London. Politics of Eezham Tamils in the diaspora and in the island need to address the issue in appropriate democratic ways to achieve reconciliation in their engagement with the international community and not to forget similar elements sitting in the Indian Establishment too, the diaspora circles further said.

Dr. Liam Fox

It is time that politics in UK should stop people like Liam Fox meddling in shady ways with a prime question of international justice such as the one between Eezham Tamils and genocidal State of Sri Lanka. As the cradle of democracy, Britain should start dealing in a transparent way with Eezham Tamils who democratically seek independence and liberation from genocide, diaspora political circles in London said citing a long-standing accusation that UK’s Defence was always working against Eezham Tamils, overtly and covertly.

At the height of the genocidal war, when hundreds of thousands of Eezham Tamils in London took to streets demanding the war to be stopped, UK’s representative in the UN Security Council, John Sawers said that the LTTE was long blighting Sri Lanka Government. Sir John Sawers is currently the chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.

Britain, the former colonial power responsible for the creation of a unitary Ceylon, is yet to accept that the Eezham Tamils went through genocide and are going through a structural genocide and this is a serious concern and grievance among Eezham Tamils.

The UK supplied arms to Sri Lanka throughout its bitter civil war – comfort for arms manufacturers but none for Sri Lankan taxpayers. Colombo has increased the defence budget by 6%, The Guardian said Saturday.

* * *

The Defence Secretary of the current Conservative government in UK, Liam Fox was long known as a friend of Colombo and a friend of Rajapaksa regime.

Fox, getting into the scene of the island’s civil war since 1995, soon became an influential person among the Sinhala elite ruling the island and he was successful in uniting them against the national challenge coming from Eezham Tamils, the Guardian feature on Saturday observed.

“The ‘Fox agreement’ was a landmark, the first time an outsider had managed to broker such a consensus in a notoriously violent political setup,” the Guardian feature said on Fox’s effort to unify Sinhala elite.

As new Sinhala power brokers coming with Rajapaksa regime, Fox was again in the game in 2007 when he became acquainted with Rajapaksa’s former foreign minister Rohita Bogollagama.

“Fox, a neocon in outlook, took a rather different view,” when the Labour Government of UK and the USA wanted to restrain Rajapaksa regime, and “his new friends turned to him for help,” the Guardian article said, adding that “In the last few months of the war Fox, who was seen in the capital Colombo as a possible future Tory leader, became an influential messenger boy – carrying back rebuttals to western capitals from Sri Lanka.”

Last year, when the visiting Rajapaksa’s lecture was cancelled by Oxford anticipating public protest, and when a war-crimes accused SL General accompanying Rajapaksa had to flee anticipating court warrant, Liam Fox chose to meet Rajapaksa at his hotel, raising eyebrows in the British Foreign Office.

Fox cancelled his visit to Colombo in last December following a row with the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, but he went on with his visit in July this year, meeting Rajapaksa and others of the regime, ostensibly in the guise of delivering Lakshman Kadirgamar Memorial Lecture.

The visit enraged the Eezham Tamils and gave a boost to the Rajapaksa regime accused of war crimes.

* * *

Fox is now accused of association with an extra-official individual Adam Werritty in his visits to Colombo and in dealings favouring Rajapaksa regime.

“Liam Fox was joined by a close personal friend and self-styled adviser when he met senior Sri Lankan ministers during an official visit this summer despite claiming that Adam Werritty had never accompanied him on government business,” The Guardian said on Thursday.

The Guardian released a photograph of Fox arriving to give the address on 9 July that shows Werritty in the background, following closely behind Sri Lankan government ministers and the British high commissioner, John Rankin.

Officially Adam Werritty, a former apartment-mate of Fox, had nothing to do with the UK government, never had any security vetting, but he used to display a business card with the logo of the British House of Commons, discribing him as Advisor to the Defence Secretary.

“Questions have also been raised about whether Werritty has sought to profit financially from the relationship. Werritty ran a defence company while Fox was shadow defence secretary, and he was involved in a health company while Fox was shadow health secretary, The Guardian said Thursday, adding that “Werritty, 34, has accompanied Fox on several trips to Sri Lanka , including one in 2009 when the pair reportedly met the president, prime minister and foreign minister. He lived with Fox in a flat near Tower Bridge before the defence secretary married Jesme Baird in 2005.”

Werritty was also running a charity, Atlantic Bridge for Fox, inside Fox’s offices in the parliament, which was dissolved just last week. The charity was designed to promote ‘the special relationship’ between the UK and the US.

A major US lobbying organisation, American Legislative Exchange Council that has 300 corporate members and 2000 state legislators of the US as members was functioning as the funding sister organisation of the Fox charity.

Apart from the Sri Lanka visits, Fox is also accused of having an ‘irregular’ meeting in Dubai, arranged by Werritty that was demonstrating new defence technologies.

The Dubai meeting brokered by Werritty may lead to Fox being called to give evidence in a blackmail trial in the US, The Guardian said Friday.

* * *

The shadow defence secretary, Jim Murphy, said the growing evidence about Fox's relationship with Werritty amounted to "a crisis engulfing the defence secretary".

"This gets murkier and murkier. People will be shocked Liam Fox is unable to provide straight answers to straight questions,” Murphy said.

"We have previously raised serious concerns about his insistence on visiting a Sri Lankan government failing to produce an independent and transparent investigation into allegations of war crimes,” the shadow defence secretary observed.

"We need a full explanation for his visit as well as clarification of the role of Adam Werritty. Mr Werritty's role is unclear and is now becoming a real concern. We need to know precisely why he was on the visit, why this was denied and especially if he benefitted personally or professionally from the visit," he further said.

The most senior civil servant in the Ministry of Defence had previously warned Liam Fox about his connections to a self-styled adviser and personal friend, Adam Werritty, the Guardian said it could reveal.

As accusations were mounting, Liam Fox on Thursday has asked the senior most civil servant, the Permanent Secretary of the Defence Ministry, to conduct an investigation whether there was any breach on national security.

It was "unthinkable" that the permanent secretary would not have already raised concerns about Werritty. "She would have raised it," Labour MP Kevan Jones told the Guardian. "She is there to protect the reputation of the department. And also to protect the secretary of state from any conflict of interest," the MP further said.

Related Articles:
12.07.11   ‘Flying Fox’ draws flak at home after Sri Lanka visit
17.12.10   Fox cancels trip amid Sri Lanka War Crimes accusations
23.03.10   BBC: Fox and Love lobbied for Sri Lanka after junkets
25.02.10   British Shadow FM calls for political reform, independent wa..
30.08.09   Liam Fox meets Mahinda Rajapakse, Sampanthan
29.08.09   British Conservative party MP Liam Fox visits Jaffna
21.11.03   Cohabitation talks to end by December 15 - PA
20.10.99   UNP: Ready to talk, but no guarantees
10.11.98   British Minister suggests mediation
06.09.98   Conditions for peace talks


External Links:

The Guardian:		Liam Fox had already been warned over Adam Werritty links
The Guardian:		Liam Fox's role in the politics of Sri Lanka
The Guardian:		Liam Fox was joined by former flatmate on official visit to Sri Lanka

2ND LEAD (Adds details)

UK Appeal Court stays deportation order of Tamil asylum seekers

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 September 2011, 03:54 GMT]
An unknown number of Tamils, rumoured to be close to 50, who were to have been on today’s flight and who had appealed for judicial review of their cases have had their High Court removal orders overturned in the Court of Appeal Wednesday, Channel-4 reported. An appeal court judge had overturned one Tamil woman’s removal orders on the grounds that the UK Border Agency had breached British and European law by disclosing potentially sensitive information on the individual to the Sri Lankan authorities, thus placing her at greater risk upon her return, the report added. However, Friday's edition of a Sri Lanka daily said that 50 deported asylum seekers arrived from UK. The true facts behind the conflicting stories is expected to emerge during the day.

News on stay of deportation Courtesy: Channel-4

The Appeal court said in ordering the stay of removal: "It is reasonably arguable that there has been breach of the prohibition of section 13(3) of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 and the UK's Charter Obligations in giving information about the "failed asylum status' of the applicant which may reasonably form the basis of an application for a judicial review," the report said.

Section 13(3) of the relevant UK Act states, "In providing identification data, the Secretary of State must not disclose whether the person concerned has made a claim for asylum."

Channel 4 report further said:

Since the end of a brutal civil war in Sri Lanka in May 2009, human rights groups have repeatedly highlighted serious concerns over the safety of members of the island’s Tamil minority.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the British-based charity Freedom from Torture cite continued credible evidence of physical abuse, disappearances, rape and detention without trial.

"The position of the present government is untenable. We have documented evidence that torture is continuing in Sri Lanka,” says Keith Best, Chief Executive of Freedom from Torture (formerly known as the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture).

“The UK is leaving itself wide open to allegations of turning a blind eye to torture by removing people in this manner,” said Mr Best. “There is no evidence that the British government is attempting to monitor what happens to them on their return."

Official documents obtained by Channel 4 News indicate that Flight PV030 was scheduled to depart for Sri Lanka with “up to 50 returnees” at 1500hrs on Wednesday 28th September. The documents reveal that passengers would comprise a mixture of failed asyslum-seekers, foreign national prisoners and other immigration offenders.

Related Articles:
26.09.11   UK plans bulk deportation of Eezham Tamil asylum seekers


External Links:

Guardian:		UK not monitoring safety of Tamils deported to Sri Lanka
DNA:		UK stops deportation of Tamils to Sri Lanka over fears of torture
channel4:		Last minute court order halts Sri Lanka deportation
Guardian:		Torture charity calls on UK to halt deportation flight to Sri Lanka