Cancel CHOGM, appeals Prof. Lynch

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 April 2013, 00:31 GMT]
Prof. Jake Lynch, director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, in an opinion column in the ABC website, called for cancellation of the Commonwealth Head of Government Meeting (CHOGM), pointing to 'serious allegations of violations of international human rights law' in Sri Lanka "including enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, torture and violations of the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, as well as intimidation of and reprisals against human rights defenders, members of civil society and journalists, threats to judicial independence and the rule of law, and discrimination on the basis of religion or belief," which prompted UNHCR voting to send its own investigators to Sri Lanka.

Prof. Jake Lynch

Diplomacy should send a clear signal to Sri Lanka that it is on the wrong track, after Sri Lanka's civil war, in which government forces are accused of killing tens of thousands of Tamil civilians, Lynch wrote.

Lynch criticized Australian diplomacy for sending wrong signals, and adds, "Carr visited Colombo in December and pronounced it safe for the return of Tamil asylum seekers - flatly contradicting every independent assessment."

On Sri Lanka's path towards autocracy, Lynch points out that "[t]he Commonwealth summit would be hosted by president Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has been removing political and judicial constraints on his ability to wield despotic power. Two of his brothers also hold cabinet posts. The constitutional limit restricting presidents to two terms in office was removed, and the High Court chief justice was dismissed, after she stood up to him."

Lynch asks "why has Canberra never backed demands for an independent international investigation of the alleged killing of civilians? Why has it not added its voice to calls for CHOGM to be moved?"

The answer may lie not in Sri Lanka at all but in one of the grimmest places in Australia: the MITA Detention Centre in Melbourne, Lynch answers:

There, a group of 30 asylum seekers, most Sri Lankan Tamils, are on hunger strike because, they say in a statement by the Tamil Refugee Council:
We left Sri Lanka because we fear to die. We came to Australia to live, not die. But death would be better than the life we have.
Their refugee claims have been granted, but they cannot leave detention - after three or four years in most cases - because of adverse security assessments by ASIO. The implication is that they are associated with the Tamil Tigers.

Not only is it fanciful to suppose that - even if they were - they would pose any threat to Australians, it is also difficult to imagine how such assessments could be made without collaboration with the Sri Lankan authorities: a source that is inevitably biased, because party to an unresolved conflict, and tainted by credible allegations of torture and abuse.

Is Australian diplomacy being distorted to avoid upsetting Colombo, for fear of an increase in the passage of boats carrying desperate people to our shores?, Lynch asks.

Chronology:

17.04.13  Cancel CHOGM, appeals Prof. Lynch

10.04.13  CHOGM heats up, Rae calls Sri Lanka a "Rogue Membe..

26.03.13  Queen to skip CHOGM - paper

16.03.13  Commonwealth's quandary over CHOGM in Sri Lanka

12.03.13  Commonwealth day brings to focus war crimes, Sri L..

11.03.13  Tutu, Robinson call for shift of CHOGM venue

03.03.13  Sri Lanka CHOGM boycott calls multiply

28.02.13  Australia should withdraw from CHOGM in Sri Lanka:..

10.02.13  CHOGM boycott calls for renewed action on Sri Lank..

External Links:

ABC:

Time for action on Colombo Commonwealth summit

Opening brief filed in US war-crimes appeal against Rajapakse

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 October 2012, 04:20 GMT]
Brief for the three Tamil Plaintiffs-Appellants in the case, Kasippillai Manoharan versus Percy Mahendra Rajpakse, the current sitting Head of Sri Lanka, was filed on Tuesday at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, plaintiffs' attorney, Bruce Fein said. The legal issue raised was whether the words "an individual" in the Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA), Congress subjected to civil liability for complicity in the universal crimes of torture or extra judicial killings under color of foreign law to implement the Convention Against Torture and to advance promoting human rights abroad include the sitting head of states (Mahinda Rajapakse) sued in their individual capacities, the legal brief of the plaintiffs said.

Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group that seeks legal redress to Tamil war victims, and which initiated the case, said that until all legal avenues are exhausted legal actions against Sri Lanka's high level military and political officials responsible for the Mu'l'livaaykkaal massacre of more than 40,000 unarmed Tamil civilians, the "crime of this century," will continue.

• Rajapakse war crimes appeal: Opening Brief

The brief argued that the District Court erred in the following legal issues when rendering the earlier ruling dismissing the case:

• the Court "erred in conceiving Customary International Law (CIL) as including discretionary as opposed to obligatory rules and by slighting the Convention Against Torture and the Rome Statute in determining whether CIL has evolved since the TVPA to permit civil suits against sitting heads of state for the universal crimes of torture and extrajudicial killing which do not paralyze a foreign government as would a criminal arrest or imprisonment of a sitting Head of State,"
• the District Court misinterpreted the TVPA by reliance on inconclusive legislative history in lieu of plain statutory text.
• the District Court further stumbled by neglecting the constitutional foreign policy prerogatives of Congress under Article I, Section 8, Clause 10 to sanction violations of the law of nations at variance with the President’s preferred realpolitik.

Plaintiffs argued that contrary to the District Court, CIL does not recognize limitless executive discretion to grant or withhold sitting Head of State Immunity. By definition, CIL is obligatory, not optional.

The brief also argued further that, to sustain the President’s unfettered discretion to extinguish a TVPA claim against a sitting head of state to advance the Presidents’ foreign policy would effect an unconstitutional taking of property without just compensation under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The Plaintiffs also pointed out athat District Court’s conclusion that Executive Branch prescriptions of sitting Head of State Immunity are binding on the Judiciary in Article III cases and controversies conflicts with the Supreme Court’s rationale in United States v. Klein, 80 U.S. 128 (1871) that rules of decision for federal courts may not be prescribed by the political branches.

In sum, the legal brief said, all relevant canons of statutory construction militate in favor of the TVPA’s application to sitting heads of state complicit in the universal crimes of torture or extrajudicial killings under color of foreign law to further Congressional human rights objectives abroad.

The complaint filed first in 2011 at the District Court for this case alleged multiple violations of the TVPA) based on Sri Lanka's President Rajapaksa’s command responsibility for the extrajudicial killings of Ragihar Manoharan, the son of Plaintiff Dr. Kasippillai Manoharan, of Premas Anandarajah, a humanitarian aid worker for Action Against Hunger, and husband of Plaintiff Kalaiselvi Lavan, and four members of the Thevarajah family, all relatives of Plaintiff Jeyakumar Aiyathurai.

The case was dismissed in February 2012 by Judge Kotelly after the U.S. State Department intervened to assert that, as a sitting head of state, Rajapakse was immune from litigation.

Chronology:

04.10.12  Opening brief filed in US war-crimes appeal agains..

24.08.12  US Court of Appeals to hear Rajapakse war-crimes c..

03.04.12  Plaintiffs file appeal on war-crimes case against ..

10.03.12  Tamil plaintiffs to appeal ruling on war crimes ca..

04.03.12  Worried Colombo consulted top D.C. law firm for ad..

02.03.12  Supreme Court's June ruling can undermine Rajapaks..

01.03.12  Head of State immunity saves Rajapakse from war-cr..

19.02.12  Court to decide if US can save Rajapakse from war-..

05.02.12  Fein: TVPA's plain language interpretation negates..

20.01.12  Tamil plaintiffs oppose US Government's stand on R..

15.01.12  Executive overreach to provide immunity to Univers..

14.01.12  US "suggests" immunity to Rajapakse from suit

18.12.11  Rajapakse case, a legal pioneer, reaches historic ..

17.12.11  Rajapakse accepts Court summons, asks US to confer..

04.12.11  War crime litigations reach crucial phase in US co..

23.11.11  Judge Kotelly to decide Rajapakse's legal fate in ..

19.10.11  Rajapakse says will defy Court Order, Shavendra hi..

14.10.11  US Court authorizes use of TamilNet to serve Rajap..

01.10.11  Rajapakse, an enemy of all mankind, filed U.S. Cou..

20.09.11  Rajapakse has no immunity against war crimes prose..

06.08.11  US Court rules Rumsfeld can be sued for torture

27.06.11  Colombo fears judgment against Rajapakse in US Cou..

18.06.11  Hague summons reaches Rajapakse for US Court case

02.06.11  U.S. case: Rajapakse ducks service, Court order so..

09.02.11  DC Court to serve summons to Rajapakse

29.01.11  Ambassador, an honest man sent to lie for Sri Lank..

28.01.11  Rajapaksa sued in US Courts over war-crimes, plain..

23.01.11  TAG to file civil case against Rajapakse in Texas ..

IDP camp dismantled, inmates appeal directly to International Community

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 September 2012, 10:33 GMT]
The SL military on Sunday dismantled the Cheddiku’lam IDP camp to forcefully remove the inmates, without making any permanent arrangement for their resettlement or return to their original villages. The seriously affected group is the villagers of Keappaa-pulavu of Mullaiththeevu district, whose village is now grabbed by the occupying military. The Sinhala military is quick to announce on Sunday, “There will be no more IDPs in the country from today.” On Friday, the camp inmates, having lost all confidence in Colombo government, have directly appealed for International intervention to enable them to return to their homes. The IC that abetted the genocide and herded the survivors into barbed-wire camps, now engineering even resettlement in continued complicity with genocidal Colombo, has again gone on record, commented Tamil political activists.

• Memorandum from Keappaapulavu families in Menik Farm

On Sunday evening, the occupying Sinhala military dismantled the fences and other structures at the Cheddiku’lam IDP camp.

125 families of Keappaa-pulavu village remaining in the camp slept under trees on Sunday night.

The families didn’t want to vacate without an assurance of returning to their own homes and lands. The SL military that now occupies their village wants them to move to a school building now and then accept alternative lands in other places for resettlement.

The SL military on Sunday left the people in the camp exposed to elements, with an unsaid message that ‘if you don’t want to move, stay in this jungle infested with elephants,’ the camp inmates said.

Knowing the ‘techniques of intimidation’ of the Sinhala military and the repeatedly proven complicity of the International Community of Establishments and its institutions like the UN in subjugating them to the genocidal state of Sri Lanka, the hopeless inmates of the camp were watching the heavy vehicles transporting their belongings on Sunday night.

They were told that they would be transported to Vattaappazhai by buses on Monday morning.

They have no idea where they would be eventually dumped for ‘resettlement’.

Last week, the villagers of Chooriyapuram in the IDP camp were taken for ‘resettlement’ and were dumped at a nearby jungle tract without any facilities, including water to drink.

Meanwhile, a commander of the occupying Sri Lanka Army, Maj. Gen. Boniface Perera, who is appointed by colonial Colombo as the ‘competent authority’ for IDPs in the northern region told Colombo-based Daily Mirror on Sunday that there is ‘no more displaced people in Sri Lanka from today’.

“A total of 1,186 people from 361 families --the last of a group of more than 300,000 displaced during the war in the north -- will leave the Vavuniya Manik Farm [Cheddiku’lam camp] to their original places of residence in the Mullaitivu district today,” the SL commander has told.

Eezham Tamils were gagged from exposing the farce of resettlement that was on one hand engineering economic subservience of them for generations to come and was on the other hand facilitating militarisation, Sinhala colonisation, demographic changes and on the whole, a structural genocide.

Salute to the people of Keappaa-pulavu, who amidst all intimidation, braved to expose the farce and put it on record that the ‘resettlement’ is another vicious military operation of Sri Lanka carried out on the subjugated nation of Eezham Tamils, with the abetment of the International Community of Establishments and the UN, commented, alternative political activists in the island.

Chronology:

24.09.12  IDP camp dismantled, inmates appeal directly to In..

22.09.12  SL military threatens IDP camp inmates to accept ‘..

21.09.12  SL forces attack, throw dirt at people demanding r..

20.09.12  Resettled people report traces of genocide

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