Another 'Humanitarian Operation' Proposed for Sri Lankan Expat Employee Heroes Stranded in Jeddah

(an old photo)

Sri Lanka government calls them Rata Viruwo in Sinhala language meaning Expatriate Heroes or more meaningfully Foreign Employee Heroes. True, the government must worship them in the morning and in the evening because they are the primary donors for the politicians' extravagances. They are the major foreign exchange source of the island economy. The Minister of Foreign Employment Promotion Dilan Perera says in the Ministry website, having received about US $ 4.1 billion in 2010, "remittance income is by far the highest foreign exchange earner for Sri Lanka, providing 33% of her foreign exchange. Remittance income is 8% of Sri Lanka’s GDP, gained from Sri Lanka’s work force abroad. This work force is about 17% of Sri Lanka’s total labor force."

But a part of these heroes sleep in an open space under a bridge in Jeddah city tonight also since they are considered by Saudi kingdom as illegal migrants who must be repatriated. The number is well over 750 including more than 60 women, sources say.

The fate is similar for a number of other migrant workers from countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh. Jeddah is a hub of present day slave trade and the issue of the stranded migrants is also part and parcel of the city.

United National Party (UNP) MP Ajith P. Perera says that they are needed to be brought back immediately. He said that some of these employees have migrated to Saudi Arabia via foreign employment agencies and they have failed to secure employment due to regulations of Saudi government. Other sources say that the bulk of these Lankans had travel led to Saudi Arabia on short-term visas and later over-stayed with the intention of securing employment. There are also those who had entered Saudi Arabia on religious pilgrimages and later stayed behind. There are others who have fled from the workplaces violating the service agreements mostly due to inhuman treatment. Most of them have registered in the Sri Lankan Embassy in Saudi Arabia and awaiting expatriation.

The UNP MP proposed the government to bring them back home in a chartered plane considering the pathetic situation they are facing. A good campaign. This is what the government of Sri Lanka wants to shun. The government preferably awaits until the kith and kin of the bereaved migrant employees collect money and send them to bring them home. Saudi police may have already informed the Sri Lanka embassy to take action to repatriate them.

Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau said last week that the government of Saudi Arabia had agreed to provide temporary jobs for 5,000 Sri Lankan expatriate workers who were staying in the Kingdom illegally. Perhaps this may help them to fetch some money to buy their air ticket.

Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau says that the government of Sri Lanka is facing difficulty in bringing back them to the home country. However, 30 to 35 of these expatriate workers are brought home, the Bureau says.

Over 600,000 Sri Lankans are employed in Saudi Arabia. The majority of them are housemaids and other domestic aide.

Minister Basil Rajapaksa said on March 12 addressing the inaugural ceremony of the Rata Viru Piyasa programme of building houses for Sri Lankan expatriate workers at the Galagedara that it was the foreign exchange earned by expatriate workers which enabled the country to purchase much needed weaponry and aircraft for the successful conclusion of the humanitarian operation which liberated the country from terrorism.

Then why don't the heroes about whom we speak here deserve a humanitarian operation? It will be an actual humanitarian operation after all.

- Ajith Parakum Jayasinghe

Editors' Guilty: Lasantha Wickramathunga forgotten at the annual journalism excellence awards ceremony in Sri Lanka.

  (July 16, 2009) The 10th annual awards ceremony to honor excellence in journalism jointly organized by Sri Lanka Editors' Guild and the Sri Lanka Press Institute was held on Tuesday (24) in Mount Lavinia Hotel with much grandeur but turned out to be a farce as the internationally recognized investigative journalist and slain founder editor of The Sunday Leader, Lasantha Wickrematunge was completely forgotten at the event.

A minute’s silence was observed in memory of all the journalists who died during the past year. Reliable sources said that the Editors' Guild was reluctant even to mention Lasantha Wickramathunga's name in the function.

Reportedly, the organizers of the event collected material from Leader Publications Pvt Ltd prior to the event with a promise of a small video presentation on the life and times of Wickrematunge, a pledge never accomplished. Reliable sources say that the Editors' Guild is in the view that the Sunday Leader is not a quality publication, and does not stand by standard journalism ethics. The organizers of the journalism awards ceremony did not accept nominations from the Sunday Leader and Morning Leader, last year and this year. However, Mohanlal Piyadasa the editor of Irudina, the Sinhala language sister paper of Sunday Leader, is an executive committee member of the Editors' Guild. Irudina depends highly on the translations of investigative reports of the Sunday Leader. Regarding ethics, no other Sri Lankan newspaper is better than the Sunday Leader, according to our point of view. If the Leader is notorious in war reporting, the other newspapers are notorious in many other criteria like gender, ethnic and religious biases etc.

Lasantha Wickrematunge was murdered in broad day light on a busy highway on January 08, 2009 as he was driving his vehicle to the newspaper office. Editors' Guild praised him in their obituaries although it took a different stand at the journalism excellence awards ceremony. It said that what the country was witnessing was an ongoing campaign against the dissemination of information to the citizenry and democratic dissent. “An adversarial relationship between any government and the media is good for governance and Lasantha epitomized this. It is also the inalienable right of the people to be kept informed and to decide on the choice of media,” the Editors’ Guild said then.

However, the N. Vidyathran, the Editor of Tamil publications, Uthayan and Sudar Oli and his staff were honored at the ceremony for reporting under special circumstances. A posthumous award was offered on MTV/MBC correspondent Rashmi Mohammed who was killed in a bomb attack on October 6, 2008 at Akuressa while covering a political meeting.

Sri Lankan Minister of Labor Mervyn Silva has meanwhile publicly claimed responsibility for ‘eliminating’ Lasantha Wickrematunga while the President Mahinda Rajapakse said to The Hindu Editor-in-chief N. Ram during an interview that Lasantha Wickramathunga was friend and the deceased had made his last call was made to the President. He said he was unable to reply it since he was in shrine room at the moment.

A post-Sarath Nanda Silva scenario in the making?

(July 98m 2009) Two fundamental rights petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court seeking changes to the verdicts delivered under the purview of the former Chief Justice Sarath Nanda Silva


One petition was filed by B. K. Abhaya Padmasiri Balasuriya of Bahirawakanda, Kandy citing that the former Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva, when he was the Chairman of the Court of Appeal, made a district court judge of Kandy to lodge a false complaint against him and he was remanded for 294 days as a result of it.


The petitioner says that the former Chief Justice chased him away without allowing him to make clarifications last year when he attempted to proceed with a fundamental rights petition. He also said that he had to wait until the former Chief Justice retired to resubmit the petition.


In the second incident, the Asia Pacific Golf Course Limited, Access International and the owners Water's Edge residencies have appealed through a motion for reconsidering the verdict in relation to the property citing that they incurred losses due to the Supreme Court verdict to revert them to the state. 


In Sri Lanka’s Judiciary: Politicised Courts, Compromised Rights, the latest policy report from the International Crisis Group, warned that the Sri Lankan judiciary is not working in a fair and impartial way that secures justice and human rights for everyone regardless of ethnicity. This risks undermining the government’s recent military victory over the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). A durable national reconciliation process is only possible if human and constitutional rights are fully restored.

“The judiciary has not acted as a check on presidential and legislative power but has instead contributed to the political alienation of Tamils”, says Robert Templer, Crisis Group’s Asia Program Director. “Under the former chief justice, the Supreme Court’s rulings strengthened political hardliners among Sinhala nationalist parties”.

Rather than assuaging conflict, the courts have corroded the rule of law and worsened ethnic tensions. They are neither constraining militarization of Sri Lankan society nor protecting minority rights. Instead, a politicized bench has entrenched favored allies, punished foes and blocked compromises with the Tamil minority. The judiciary’s intermittent interventions on important political questions have limited settlement options for the ethnic conflict.

The Hindu editor writes after his privileged visit to the IDP camps in northern Sri Lanka

Following is the article written by 'The Hindu' newspaper editor-in-chief N. Ram following his hyped visit to the IDP camps in northern Sri Lanka. The government of Sri Lanka provides access to a selected few outsiders to the camps. Local media and even the parliamentary representatives of the displaced people are blocked access to these camps.

Visiting the Vavuniya IDP camps: an uplifting experience
N. Ram



The photographs by Thilak Bandara – taken during our visit on July 1, 2009 to some of the Zone 1 IDP camps on the outskirts of Vavuniya town in Sri Lanka’s mainland North – speak for themselves. They are testimony to the Sri Lankan government’s efforts, with international assistance, to care for a brave and resilient Tamil community, which will be resettled and rehabilitated in the next few months through an ambitious programme.   Colombo: The last phase of Sri Lanka’s low-intensity military conflict saw the elimination of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam as a military force. It simultaneously witnessed a poignant human drama in which some 300,000 Tamil civilians were rescued by force of arms from a terrorist organisation that, claiming to fight for their freedom, had no compunction in using them as a human shield.



Most of these internally displaced Sri Lankans are now housed and cared for by the government in transitional relief camps located in five demarcated zones of the 1500-acre Menik Farm on the outskirts of the town of Vavuniya in the mainland North. International concern has been expressed over the present condition and the future of these Tamil civilians, who include a large number of children, women, and senior citizens.



Following a three-hour conversation, including a recorded interview, with President Mahinda Rajapaksa at ‘Temple Trees’ in Colombo, I had, at his suggestion and thanks to the helicopter and other facilities provided by the Defence Ministry, the opportunity of seeing for myself how the Tamil IDPs were being sheltered and cared for in the camps. It was an uplifting experience, which is reflected in some measure in the photographs by Thilak Bandara published on this page. The sight of tens of schoolchildren returning from makeshift schools and of the distribution by the Controller of Examinations and his team of preparatory material for the A-level exams, which will be taken in a month, was special.




What became clear during the visit to Anandakumaraswamy Village in Zone 1, through glimpses of other camps in the vast IDP relief complex, and in conversations in Tamil with some of the displaced people was this. Conditions in these camps are much better than what has been depicted, mostly second-hand, that is, without visiting the camps, in western media reports. Moreover, they are visibly better than conditions in Sri Lankan refugee camps in India, which are still mostly inaccessible to journalists, researchers, and other outsiders. Basic needs, including education for the schoolchildren and vocational training for older boys and girls, are being met by the Sri Lankan government with assistance from the United Nations, a number of countries, including India, and more than 50 INGOs.




Hearteningly, the best hospital in the Menik Farm IDP relief complex is the one staffed and provisioned by the Indian Medical Team with its eight doctors, four nurses, and overall strength of 60, including senior and junior paramedics. After this highly skilled and dedicated medical team, led by Dr. K. Vasantha Kumar, moved to Settikulam from Pulmodai (in the East) in March, it has treated close to 13,000 Tamil civilians and performed several surgical operations.




In his interview, which will be published in The Hindu on Monday, President Rajapaksa claimed, without exaggeration, that “the condition in the camps is the best any country has.” He admitted some “shortcomings,” chief among them being a lack of “freedom of movement.” But he also emphasised his responsibility for the security of his people and pointed to the need to speed up the work of de-mining in the heavily mined Wanni, which needed to be certified by the U.N. He reiterated his personal commitment to resettle all the Tamil civilians speedily.



The Sri Lankan government is now confident that the President’s 180-day resettlement plan can be implemented. This confidence would have been boosted by the unexpected success of the first meeting of the All Parties Committee for Development and Reconciliation, in which all parties, including the Tamil National Alliance, promised cooperation and support to the project of reconciliation and development in the North.




Brigadier S. Perera, who has responsibility for the Vavuniya IDP complex. Photo: N.Ram.

'Catastrophy for Sri Lanka to take triumphant position' - Ramachandra Guha

London (PTI): A noted historian has warned that it would be catastrophic for Sri Lanka to take a triumphant position on its victory over LTTE and it is time the country gave democracy and pluralism a chance. 

"In the aftermath of defeat of Tamil Tigers, it would be catastrophic if the Sri Lankan Government were to take a triumphant position. I am told there is a proposal to build statues of a Sri Lankan King who died 2,000 years ago to commemorate the victory," Ramachandra Guha, the Bangalore-based historian and biographer said while delivering the fifth Nehru memorial Lecture 2009 on "Democracy and Violence in South Asia and Beyond" at the Nehru Centre here on Friday night. 

Patrick French, a noted writer presided over the function, which was attended by the Indian High Commissioner to the UK, Shiv Shankar Mukherjee. 

Drawing a parallel between the violence in Jammu and Kashmir and Northern Sri Lanka, Mr. Guha who has previously taught at the Universities of Yale and Stanford, said: "Just as Kashmir is a big blot on India's democracy, the treatment of Tamils is a signal failure of Sri Lankan democracy. 

"As in Kashmir, the problem arose because of denial of democracy's software and hardware - elections were rigged both in Kashmir and Northern Sri Lanka," he said, adding "cultural pluralism in terms of language, in terms of dress, in terms of faith is a serious part of democracy." 

The historian said "in northern Sri Lanka, apart from rigging the elections, there was discrimination on the basis of language and religion". 

Mr. Guha said in 1956 Sinhala was made the sole official language of the island placing it on a position of superiority. This act of injustice was compounded in 1972 when Buddhism was made official religion of Sri Lanka - meaning Buddhists were superior to Tamils, Muslims, Christians and Hindus. 

"Discrimination on the basis of religion and language was further intensified by the burning of the great Jaffna Library in 1981 when the Sri Lankan army in an act of petty and vicious vindictiveness put to flame the great repository of Tamil culture and two years later, there was a progrom against Tamils in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, orchestrated and directed by ruling politicians," he stressed. 

Mr. Guha also noted that the LTTE supremo V Prabhakaran had assassinated every rival Tamil politician. Emphasising that the Tamils in Sri Lanka had also made "terrible mistakes", he said "Prabhakaran led the Tamil people down the road to disaster." 

Answering a question, Mr. Guha said he wanted India to be a "more contented and less violent place." 

He said "the greatness of modern Indian democracy is that every citizen is equal, regardless of language and religion. That is what Sri Lanka can learn from India."

Sri Lanka: Politicised Courts, Compromised Rights - International Crisis Group

Image via Wikipedia

Colombo/Brussels, 30 June 2009: The Sri Lankan government must reform the country’s judicial system urgently if the military defeat of the Tamil Tigers is to lead to a lasting peace.

Sri Lanka’s Judiciary: Politicised Courts, Compromised Rights, the latest policy report from the International Crisis Group, warns that the Sri Lankan judiciary is not working in a fair and impartial way that secures justice and human rights for everyone regardless of ethnicity. This risks undermining the government’s recent military victory over the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). A durable national reconciliation process is only possible if human and constitutional rights are fully restored. 

“The judiciary has not acted as a check on presidential and legislative power but has instead contributed to the political alienation of Tamils”, says Robert Templer, Crisis Group’s Asia Program Director. “Under the former chief justice, the Supreme Court’s rulings strengthened political hardliners among Sinhala nationalist parties”.

Rather than assuaging conflict, the courts have corroded the rule of law and worsened ethnic tensions. They are neither constraining militarization of Sri Lankan society nor protecting minority rights. Instead, a politicized bench has entrenched favored allies, punished foes and blocked compromises with the Tamil minority. The judiciary’s intermittent interventions on important political questions have limited settlement options for the ethnic conflict.

Today, neither the lower nor the higher courts in Sri Lanka provide any guarantee of personal security or redress against arbitrary state violence. Although torture in police custody is endemic, courts are unwilling to provide adequate remedies for illegal or abusive detention. Police, judges and government officials have acted in ways that further the goals of powerful political actors, undermine the rule of law and deepen the current political and humanitarian crisis. The possibility of transitional justice, which is necessary for society to break the cycle of violence, is still missing.

The recent appointment of a new chief justice is an opportunity for reforms to begin. A first step toward restoring judicial independence would be a return to an orderly appointment and transfer of judges. This needs to be done both in the lower and appellate judiciary. There should also be fundamental reform of Sri Lanka’s extensive and often abused emergency laws, which are used disproportionately against Tamils. Provisions in the emergency laws concerning arrest, detention and derogation from routine criminal procedures need to be removed, as well as those that criminalize free speech and the exercise of associational rights.

“Fixing institutions and reforming laws will only have a limited effect until political actors, and especially the presidency, feel the cost of infringing on judicial independence”, warns Donald Steinberg, Crisis Group Deputy President for Policy. “Without a concerted effort by the bench and bar, the political costs of interfering with the judiciary will remain minimal”.